


Blame it on Ed Sheeran

by wawalux



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Angst, Being Lost, Blood and Violence, Claire Temple is So Done, Depression, F/M, Foggy Nelson & Karen Page Friendship, Friends to Lovers, Human Disaster Matt Murdock, Hurt Matt Murdock, Jealousy, Karen Page Knows Matt is Daredevil, Matt Murdock & Foggy Nelson Friendship, Moving On, Non-Graphic Smut, POV Matt Murdock, References to Depression
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-06
Updated: 2021-02-15
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:09:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 42,607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27417058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wawalux/pseuds/wawalux
Summary: The message is clear, it covers her head-to-toe.Not yours, not yours, not yours.No. Not anymore.[OR Karen starts dating a new man. Matt shatters. Absolutely Karedevil]THIS FIC CONTAINS REFERENCES TO DEPRESSION. PLEASE DO NOT READ IT IF DEPRESSION IS ONE OF YOUR TRIGGERS.
Relationships: Matt Murdock & Franklin "Foggy" Nelson, Matt Murdock & Karen Page, Matt Murdock/Karen Page
Comments: 306
Kudos: 69





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Here I was minding my own business when Spotify decided to dump this song into my life. Read the title. I mean it.
> 
> I cannot stress this enough: this fic contains references to depression. Please stop reading now if it is one of your triggers. <3

_Walking down 29th and Park_

_I saw you in another's arms_

_Only a month we've been apart_

_You look happier_

It’s the kind of thing that he notices straight away. It lingers like a bad taste at the back of his throat, an unscratchable itch that begs for attention. Matt tries to brush it off, buries it with the nagging weight in the pit of his stomach. Tells himself it doesn’t mean anything, that it’s probably a byproduct of casual mingling in the too-tight subway space.

*

It gets stronger. Worse. More precise. A fistful of hair, a tongue darting in her mouth, a hand tracing tentatively down, enduring on the edge of her hips. Karen inadvertently carries the imprints of each one of their dates with her. Matt smells _him_ like a vice grip wrapped around his chest.

*

Foggy and Karen whisper about it like schoolgirls. They shiver in the freezing November wind on the corner of their block, hoping, naively, that the hustle and bustle of the city, that the distance from Matt’s batt ears will cover up their words. Karen’s excitement is palpable, even from here. She blushes so warm it makes Matt pull at his collar. Her heart is renewed, like an overeager puppy, it forgets all meaning of the word ‘regular’ as it beats away against Matt’s skull. Foggy is even quieter in his whispered encouragement, just not quiet enough. Matt tunes into the first radio he can find, blasts music through both headphones until the base stretches the lining of his eardrums, until tears prick in the corner of his eyes from the agony. It’s not enough to cover the rustle of clothing as Foggy hugs Karen, his hushed: ‘I’m so happy for you.’

Matt is out running across rooftops before his discarded headphones have hit the ground.

*

The message is clear, it covers her head-to-toe.

_Not yours, not yours, not yours_.

No. Not anymore.


	2. Chapter 2

_'Cause baby you look happier, you do_

_My friends told me one day I'll feel it too_

_And until then I'll smile to hide the truth_

_But I know I was happier with you_

He almost expects it, the day Foggy lingers by his door. The casual stance that spurts nervousness from each one of his pores, the way his heart betrays him before he’s even said a word. The fabric of Matt’s shirt turns to sandpaper, scratches and burns as it swishes against his sensitive skin. Matt forces himself to keep steady, works his hands over the braille wording, unable to pick up more than a paper covered in bumps.

“Hey buddy, wanna go grab lunch?”

“I’m alright, Fogs. I’ll just finish with this case. Maybe head home early,” maybe he’ll go punch something and see how long it takes for it to break.

“Come on man, we’ve got it in the bag. My treat. We can even go to that place that makes the salads you like,” Matt wonders how desperate Foggy is to have this chat. Last he heard, Foggy told him salad is ‘rabbit food’ and then proceeded to call Matt his ‘bunny’ for the rest of the afternoon.

“You. Eating a salad. I guess I have to witness this,” Matt walks to the door, tries to fold his lips into a curve that could resemble a smile, pretends he doesn’t notice how neither of them mentions inviting Karen too. She should be back from her interview anytime now. Maybe Matt will pick her up some lunch on their way back. Maybe Matt should stop thinking about her.

The walk to the salad place isn’t short. Foggy fills it with mindless chit-chat that Matt forgets the second it leaves Foggy’s mouth. He left his jacket in the office, is wearing nothing but his shirt and tie, and the cold wind is sharp as it bares its teeth against each bit of his exposed skin, leaving imprints like a slap. Matt welcomes the pain, hones in on the exact way his nerve endings shriek, uses the chattering of his teeth as an excuse not to form words.

They are silent as they queue. Matt can’t remember when Foggy stopped yammering. He toys nervously with the clasp of his wallet, clicks it shut, snaps it open. Each click resonates in Matt’s molars. Matt massages his temples in a futile attempt to unspread the echo from clanking in his brain, the beginning of a migraine making every noise a thousand times louder in his head.

He grabs a salad at random from the display in the fridge, folds his arms close to his body to attempt to shield himself from the bustling lunch-time crowd, the pressing of bodies and unsynchronized symphony of rumbling stomachs and nervous tics and too loud conversations, the sweat layered shirts and perfume and deodorants wafting at 360° around him, the trapped frigid air and blasted heater dryness, covering Matt head-to-toe, inside and out. Matt worries he can’t tell where his own body ends anymore. Foggy’s fingers find his elbow amidst the hurricane of sensations, gently pry the salad away from his hand and replace it with a lighter box with an: ‘You don’t like that one, it’s all mayo and stodginess. This one is lentils and tuna and veg and egg and a rabbit-approved lemon vinaigrette. Why don’t you go sit, there’s a free table in the corner. I’ll get this one buddy.”

Matt’s so grateful he’d erect a monument in Foggy’s honor. He leaves Foggy in the psychotic nightmare and pushes his way past the sea of bodies, his cane unable to find an inch of free floor space to clack against, until he is blissfully free and caressing the back of the chair in the corner. He places his palm flat against the grimy table, ignores the leftover imprints of hands and breaths and food, uses the horizontal plane to try and steady himself while he takes deep meditative breaths. There’s three pieces of gum stuck at the base of the table, solid and forgotten, like watchful gargoyles perched on a rooftop. Matt tries to guess what flavor they used to be, whether the chewer was a smoker or a lover. Foggy reaches him smelling like everybody else, but his heartbeat is just his. Matt uses that to carve a safe space out of his own personal hell, the familiarity of it bringing him home.

“Sorry man, I didn’t think it would be this mental in here. You alright?”

Matt’s hands area at his temples again, pressing too hard to be helpful. He drops them to feel the container that Foggy has placed in front of him. An unused napkin and a wooden fork and knife are on his right, where Foggy knows Matt will find them. Foggy’s care is something that never ceases to take Matt by surprise, like a kite banging in the wind, Matt is constantly waiting for the last string to be cut. Matt nods, opens the lid and starts toying with the food, tossing it around like he is trying to disperse the dressing while he is really just waiting for Foggy to say his piece.

“So, how’ve you been?” Foggy asks casually. He’s not eating either, but that’s not surprising. Foggy chose a salad with some Mexican theme. Matt can smell cumin and paprika and black beans and sweetcorn, amongst other ‘way-too-healthy-to-be-food’ ingredients that Foggy will only eat because he is trying to mollify Matt before his big reveal.

“I’m fine, Foggy,” he answers carefully, “you?”

“Oh yeah. Marce has been working late, later than us, so I’ve had to learn to cook,” he huffs out a laugh that feels too strangled and is so not Foggy. Matt hums but doesn’t say anything else.

“You been going out much?” More tip-toeing. Little droplets of icy water shivering down Matt’s spine.

“No more than usual,” he tells him, finally taking a bite, chewing slowly, tasting everything but nothing. Foggy mimics him, shoves a tentative forkful in his mouth. Matt’s not blind enough to miss the half gagging movement that Foggy makes before swallowing too quickly to finish chewing. Matt half smiles.

“Been dating anyone lately?”

Matt can’t take this anymore. He drops his fork in the bowl, places both palms on the table.

“Foggy, I know.”

“Know what?” Foggy’s innocent tone is completely overshadowed by the nervous beat of his pulse. Lie, lie, lie.

“About Karen,” he tells him anyways, just for the pleasure of hearing his pulse pick-up.

“Oh,” there’s a beat of silence where Foggy just stares at his plate, “I…how? Did she tell you?”

Matt shifts uncomfortably. Foggy has never been a big fan of his abilities…

“I can…smell it. Him. I..” his mouth snaps close with a clack the same second Foggy’s opens and starts mouthing perfect o’s like a fish.

“Right. You can…really? Jeez,” Foggy runs a hair through his hair, seemingly unnerved when it ends before his shoulders, “maybe they should call you hound-man instead of Daredevil,” he mutters.

“Just say what you need to say, Foggy,” Matt cuts to the chase.

“How do you…Right,” he amends as an afterthought. He then takes a huge breath that makes his lungs squeak they are so full, “Karen is really excited about this, Matt. He seems like a really nice guy and…she really deserves some happiness.”

“I agree, but that’s not what you came here to say.”

Foggy takes another deep breath, lifts another mouthful through the air and then seems to think better of it. He rests his fork back on the plate and squares his shoulders: “Just…don’t ruin it for her, ok?”

“What’s that supposed to mean.”

“Look, don’t go all defensive on me Matt. But you guys have a history and she has been really worried about telling you because...I don’t know, maybe she feels like things are unfinished between you two. And I know maybe you can’t help it, but you keep sending her those charming smiles and have this full-blast wounded duck thing going on and then you go and die and come back and…just…just be nice when she tells you ok?”

“Why wouldn’t I be nice,” Matt grits out.

“I never said that…I…be supportive. You guys have been kind of weird since…well, everything. And just…please, Matt, she really needs this,” Foggy is practically begging now. The steadiness of his heart hits Matt like a punch to the gut. Has he been such a bad friend that Foggy needs to beg him not to snatch the one ounce of happiness Karen has found in her life? Does Foggy genuinely believe that Matt could do that to her? He and Karen are friends. Just friends. She can date whomever she wants. He doesn’t care. He doesn’t.

Matt bites his lip. Hard. He moves his fists under the table so that he can clench them into the semblance of a punch.

“I’m happy for her,” he tells Foggy eventually. Happy, that his heart is hidden. That it can beat in peace. Lie, lie, lie, lie.

“Yeah, you might want to tell your face,” Foggy says uncertainly. He hears Foggy’s arm lift in the air, move towards him, but he slides off the chair and takes a step back before Foggy can reach him.

“Look Foggy, what Karen does and doesn’t do is none of my business. She can date, or not. She’s a big girl, she doesn’t need my permission. I’m happy for her, ok?” Foggy makes a move like he wants to object, “I don’t have time for this. I need to work on the case.”

He's out of the door before his cane is fully unfolded, so lost in his own storm of rage that he barely acknowledges the people that he smacks into on his way down the street. Red. Matt sees red everywhere. The devil inside him purrs and sniff the air hopefully. It takes all he has not to throw his cane into the nearest dumpster and shoot off the rooftops, run until Foggy’s pleas stop ringing in his ears. He reminds himself that he _doesn’t care_ to force himself back to the office.

Matt’s two blocks away when he hears Foggy throw the two untouched salads in the bin, grumbling about ‘overreaction’, ‘children’ and ‘rabbit food’ under his breath.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Denial, denial, denial.


	3. Chapter 3

_Ain't nobody hurt you like I hurt you_

_But ain't nobody love you like I do_

_Promise that I will not take it personal, baby_

_If you're movin' on with someone new_

It’s a week before the subject crops up again. A week of Matt taking special care in acting like a good friend. He leaves his door open while he works, tries to join the office banter when Foggy and Karen pipe-up in fruitless arguments. He smiles and says please and thank you. He lingers for more than a cursory ‘how are you’ on his way in and out of the office. He watches Karen slide away from his grasp like she is slowly turning into water. He smiles harder with every drop.

_Not mine, not mine, not mine._

It’s Foggy that gives her away, really. Karen’s pulse has gotten into the habit of rabbiting away around Matt. Simple conversations make her blush so deep that Matt could draw her caricature. Her laugh is a little too hoarse, her palms sweatier despite the chill. Matt ignores it all like he ignores _his_ smell, every layer of _him_ that she now wears like a second skin.

That evening Foggy makes a spectacle of packing up for the night. He announces it so loudly that the office downstairs is probably aware that Foggy is ‘leaving now’. He wishes them all a good night, waves through a ‘see you tomorrow, guys’. He then makes an encouraging gesture towards Karen that Matt can’t quite catch, while knowing it’s there. It stings, shuts him out. He hates it when they use his blindness against him. He hates it when he is reminded that it’s them and him, not the three of them. Matt is sure it didn’t used to be like this. Or maybe it did, and Matt was too busy trying to be two people to remember to be part of three.

Karen lingers at her desk, re-arranging the same stack of papers too many times. Her heart sprints in her chest while she wastes time adjusting the lamp, taking sip after sip of water that fails to make her throat less scratchy. Matt can hear how the dryness is warping every one of her breaths. He stays seated, pretending to read about the case while he is really just reading her. The swish of her hair as it whispers against her face. The strand that keeps tugging itself loose from her nervous finger combing. How her eyelashes settle like feathers every time she closes her eyes. The way her bra strap is a little twisted on her left shoulder and is creating a little line of angry heat, a pool of wonder that Matt wishes he could kiss away. Matt shakes his senses loose before they get trapped too deep into her cage.

She moves when he does, pretending to be getting ready to head out. She dashes through the motions then, or maybe she was already packed-up. She stands and grabs her coat, folds it across her arms that are tight around her chest. Protective. Her bag is carefully slung around her shoulders, the tang of metal from her gun sour in Matt’s mouth. She moves with confident steps that clack against the laminate floor as she casually makes her way to his door, as if as an afterthought. Matt thinks they must’ve have been planning this for days.

“You done too?” She asks him, hurrying to clear her throat when it comes out as too much of a squeak.

“I…yeah,” he gives her his best confident smile, thirty-two teeth and one big, fat, lie. He keeps his hands busy with desk things, arranging, re-arranging, packing things that don’t need to be packed. His desk will be a foreign territory tomorrow, it’ll take him twice the time to start work. Still, Matt can’t bring himself to stop.

“How’s the…umm…Hernandez case coming along?” She asks when he’s moved the same file three times.

“Good, good. We’ll make sure her husband doesn’t touch her again.”

There’s a beat of silence. Karen takes a step back but speaks louder.

“We, you and Foggy or _we_ …you and Daredevil?”

Matt freezes as he always does when Karen mentions the devil. Like a child caught in the act, his eyes automatically move away, forgetting that they are invisible behind the tinted lenses, that there is no stare to shy away from. He squares his shoulders, wills himself to grow up, to stop having to make excuses, to move forward.

“Ah…the three of us I guess.”

“Right,” Karen nods and quietens. Matt can feel her stare studying him but there’s nowhere to hide in this tiny office. His tie suddenly feels suffocating, the neon sound of the lights buzzing like a beehive. He wills himself not to move while his senses range out of their own volition, like they need to ready him for the potential danger.

“I met someone,” Karen blurts out.

He knows. Of course he knows. He’s known for weeks. Still, the world shakes, trembles, unsteady under his feet. It feels like the whole world might cave in. It feels like maybe it already has.

“I…I know Karen,” his voice is brittle like that thin layer of ice that covers the lake after the first frost. He tries to clear the rasp away, “that’s…uh…it’s great.”

Matt runs a hand through his hair, wishing he could just loosen that tie, just a tad. His fingers curl around empty air on their way down. He freezes them before they can ball into fists.

“You don’t need to say that…”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

Karen shifts uncomfortably, saturating the office air with every detail of her. He’s under her nails from when she scratched at his skin. The pads of her fingers are bathed in aftershave all the way to her elbows. His breath still lingers on her neck, up her jaw, a mix of _him_ and spearmint toothpaste and coffee. It’s like she dyed her hair a different color, it’s now so foreign to Matt. He struggles to find Karen in the cloud of _him_.

She almost leaves. She even turns, casts a furtive glance at the door, like she is contemplating her escape.

“Look, Matt, we don’t need to do this.”

Matt feels like an asshole. _Don’t ruin it for her_ , Foggy had warned, like it was even a possibility. Only an asshole like him wouldn’t realize that it wasn’t a possibility, it was a certainty.

“Karen, wait. I…“ I’m an asshole, “We’re friends, right? I…I would really like it if we could be friends,” Karen nods like he isn’t blind in her haste to agree with him. It reminds him of other times, of…No. Not anymore.

“So…does this gentleman have a name?” He asks with a grin that he hopes looks more real than it feels.

“Gentleman, huh?” She lets out a quiet giggle, an unexpected gift that makes his stomach do a funny dance with his heart, “he’s…his name is Thomas.”

“Thomas,” Matt runs the name, _his_ name, through his lips, wondering if any name has ever tasted so bitter, or ever tasted at all, “that’s a solid name.”

“He’s a solid guy,” she replies easily.

“How did you meet? Was it one of those app things that Foggy keeps telling me about? Thunder? Timber?”

“Tinder,” Karen corrects him, “And ohmygod is Foggy on tinder?! Isn’t he with Marcy?”

“Oh no, it’s for me. He...uh…wanted to see how far my ‘hot girl radar’ extends…” Karen laughs freely now. Matt collects each sound like rain in a bucket. But precious. So precious.

“And?” She asks.

Matt shrugs, “apparently I have a gift.”

He doesn’t. He cheated. He swiped right every time Foggy’s heartbeat spiked.

“Where was I during all this?!” Karen can’t seem to catch her breath, she is laughing so hard, her nervousness slowly ebbing away, like an echo. His still jolts through him, a small current that takes him by surprise, and leaves something hollow behind every time it dies down. Something that should be radiating warmth but is broken now. Matt wants it back, wants _this_ back.

“Ah I don’t remember, must’ve been on one of your PI days,” he goes back to tidying the desk, this time paying a little attention. He placed his screen reader in his gym bag. He’s too ashamed to pull it out while Karen is watching.

“Can’t leave you two alone for a second,” her hair swishes like a curtain drawn as she shakes her head, residual laughter still hitching her breath. Matt makes a mock offended expression that sets her off all over again. Matt wants to watch it with his senses, tries to capture the ebbs of lines that won’t still long enough to form a smile.

“Hey, next time I want-“ she starts, but then her phone vibrates and her expression drops. Matt has the sudden urge to fling her phone out of the window.

“Someone waiting for you?”

“Yeah,” she turns back to him, “you ready to go?”

“No, ah, you go ahead,” Matt lies.

He crosses the small office on instinct, hands reaching out. He hopes Karen won’t notice when they shake. He takes her folded coat from her hands, shakes it open and holds it out for her to slide into.

Karen hesitates, clearly uncomfortable, her heart galloping, an unsteady thrum in his ears. She holds her breath as she slides her arms in the thick woolen fabric, steps away as soon as it’s on her. Matt recoils, as if waking from a dream, he shuffles backwards, face burning.

“Right…I…Sorry. Yeah,” he mumbles.

“Matt, wait,” she says gently, sweetly. Matt can’t tell if that’s pity in her voice. She steps forward and takes his hand before he’s even realized that she has moved. Her hand is cold and steady in his. It stay still, as hands do, when there’s nothing left to explore.

_Friends. Just friends._

“I’m happy for you. Really,” he tells her, feeling her pulse change in his ears, in her fingers.

“Thanks, Matt,” she whispers, her gaze burning his skin, “he…he’s a good one.”

The steadiness of her pulse, of her _honesty_ , is worse than a punch to the gut.

“Karen I…” he takes a breath, curls his lips into a grin, “just remember that I have a good friend at your beck and call if he turns out not to be.”

“I’ll bear it in mind,” her cold hand slides away from his, leaving frost in its wake, “goodnight, Matt.”

“Yeah, uh…goodnight Karen,” he whispers back.

She lingers for a beat, one beat that feels a lot like it used to be, before her footsteps are swallowed by the rest of the world. Matt barely makes it to the tiny office restroom before he is violently sick. He has to rest his clammy forehead against the bathroom tile to find his feet again.

That night, a perp that has done nothing more than try to rob a liquor store bleeds freely into the gutter. His mumbled: ‘whys’ ring too close to home, are accompanied by a voice that’s barely broken, a heart that beast fast, and not just from fear. Matt leaves them all behind when he phones for an ambulance, heads home with a devil that feels too much like him still raging under his skin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been loving your reactions so far, thanks so much for commenting!
> 
> How do you think Matt handled this one?
> 
> (Next chapter on Tuesday :) )


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hm. You might want to sit down for this one.

_Saw you walk inside a bar_

_He said somethin' to make you laugh_

_I saw that both your smiles were twice as wide as ours_

_Yeah, you look happier, you do_

Matt shouldn’t be here tonight. He doesn’t know why he is.

_Because there’s something wrong with me_ , he thinks, _that’s why_. Shit.

He didn’t mean to overhear their plans, the: ‘I’ll come over and cook you something special.’ Matt just hears things. Or rather, Matt just hears _everything_. Still, he knows better than to be here. And the excuse that he is ‘just running patrol’ is getting old fast.

He can’t pick out the exact ingredients, not from two roofs across. The hint of spice is unmistakable though, makes his eyes burn even from here. Indian. _He’s making her Indian_. His stomach churns, nauseous, as he listens to the onions spit-spatter in the pan, the spices falling softer than sand in the angry heat, the water glugging, heavy with starch from the cooking rice.

One meal, and another memory lost, just like that. Indian, _their_ Indian. Now, that won’t be theirs anymore either.

She laughs easily as he smacks her hands away from the chopped tomatoes. Their mock fight turns into an embrace, he pulls her close with both hands on her hips, fabric shuffling in protest as it flattens. His hands travel down, grab a handful and squeeze. His nose edges up and down her neck, Karen’s hair a blissful curtain of oblivion for him to nestle into, while her hands explore his chest, his shoulders. Their lips shift between kisses and words, busy, hungry, hungrier than their stomachs.

_What about the cooking?_

_We can order in._

Simple truces as the heat flares low, glows white in Matt’s senses. Ingredients get trampled, some squelch as they hit the ground. Karen giggles when he lifts her up onto the counter, discards her dress. The button of his jeans pops loud as gunfire. The onions hiss in protest as they burn, unnoticed.

Matt’s still here, caught between ‘deer in the headlights’ and a being stuck like a fridge magnet. He should leave. This is beyond wrong. He knows it. He wills himself to be better, to just walk away, to find a scream, a fight, a sobbing figure to rescue. Something. _Anything._ He even stands, moves closer to the roofs edge, as if the new wind currents could enhance his already perfect hearing. It’s like he is in a trance, hypnotized, his ears have no interest in the city tonight, and they hone in on the sounds of their love-making, young and fresh and new and carefree. Matt wraps his arms tight around his chest to keep himself from breaking apart.

The mind is a wondrous thing, it knows what’s best and chooses to do it all wrong. A part that feels like hemorrhaging is yelling at him to leave, while the other is staying right here, recording each of her sighs in the sting of a perfectly placed cut, one that will scar and leave a trace. Matt knows these memories will haunt him forever. But even as the disgust for who he has become fills up every crevice of his soul, images seep unwanted into his mind, and start playing like a movie, one where it’s him in that apartment, in that kitchen, Karen on the counter, but with Matt this time…

It’s not hard to imagine, not when it’s all exposed like this. Karen, all spread out for his senses to read. He can almost see it. Taste it. Exactly when he’d rest, when he’d still, when he’d linger, when he’d stall. He’d know how to capture the exact cadence behind each of her sighs, how to appreciate each breath as it runs too fast from her lips. He’d make her moan his name in his ear, her fingernails leave trails of blood as they scratch his back. He’d know to suck that pert nipple that is begging for attention, when to slide his hands too low. He would love Karen Page, love her so precisely that she’d never wonder what makes her different from every other woman, because he would show her, love _her_ and every one of her details, until she’d lie, spent and glowing, in his arms.

This man, he doesn’t know. He loves her with the clumsy expertise of a man who has been taught the basics by previous failed relationships and bouts of bad porn. He loves her like she is just another girl, just another body. Like they are all the same.

They’re not. She’s not. She’s…Karen.

_Not mine, not mine, not mine._

It ends predictably. He comes too fast, before she’s even half-way there. She coos his sluggish apologies away, pretends it doesn’t matter. Her crotch is still burning low, embers teased into sparks that have nowhere to go.

She’s goes to her bedroom to change out of her ruined dress while he phones for take-out. Matt hears Karen creak her window open, her puff of effort to force it all the way up its rusted hinges. She hangs her torso out in the wintry air, skin still bare and flushed. The contrast makes her light-up like a flame. Her temple rests against the window frame while her breathing slows.

Matt can taste her, all of her, even from here. Her sweat, her hair, her sex. She’s all mingled with _him_ , creating a whole new scent that Matt wishes he could comb apart. She still smelled like Matt the day after their date. Matt had thought that it was the most wonderful thing in the world. But he never told her. He should have told her. Now…Now, it’s too late.

Karen shifts suddenly, her head turning briefly in the direction of the bedroom door that she forgot to close completely, then scours the night outside.

“Are you there?” She whispers, so low that she can be sure that Thomas could never hear.

Matt turns to stone, the adrenaline surge so sudden that he almost vibrates out of his body. He searches for the cooler currents, knowing the shadows will conceal him better. Irrationally, because she can’t see him, not from this far. Not up here.

It’s just a question, maybe a sixth sense, a weird inkling, a misplaced deja vu. Is Karen worried about a peeping Tom? Does she feel his senses on her, prying, unwanted, on her private moments? Or is Matt just on her mind tonight, like the strong smell of spices wafting into the dark?

Matt wants to go, he wants to go to her so badly. Tell her that he is here, _Karen I’m right here_ , finish what that other man started. It would be so easy. His mind has already calculated the exact route to her bedroom window, and it’s seven moves away. Seven steps to heaven.

But he could never. He would never. No, not anymore. And so he’s gone before the window slams shut and Thomas pops his head in the door to ask her if she wants cilantro in the dhal.

*

Blood drips like rain and only some of it is his. His fists collide with the force of a stampeding herd of elephants, and the sound might just be the same. His knuckles scream, the thick rope thins. Matt screams louder, hits harder. He is power and rage. He is the devil. Justice has no place in hell. Today, the world burns, and Matt can’t stop fueling the flames.

“Hey man, stop, please!”

“PLEASE!”

Matt can’t hear the begging when it gets warped in his head, when it sounds like _his_ voice. _We can order in. We can order in. We can order in._

Cartilage is dust. Bones shift like they’ve lost their way. Muscle and skin blend into one. Matt hits like he needs it to breathe.

“You’re killing him! PLEASE! You’re killing him!”

The heart under Matt’s fists slows from its run, changes its mind, begins to crawl. The lungs inflate like popped balloons. There’s no space left around the hemorrhaging, there’s too much fluid, they just can’t lift.

His friend is sobbing now, _please_ s sodden in snot. He can’t help him, Matt broke both his legs before he minced the guy with the gun. The man is dying, slowly and surely, like a lengthening shadow before the sun sets, death is lingering patiently behind the lines, waiting for its turn.

The man under his fists takes one last shuddering breath. His exhale is forced out by gravity, lowering his chest. The heart beats once, twice, stops half-way through the third beat, the blood chambers still half full, like his life used to be. A man that still had half a life to live.

_No._

The first ‘no’ is like a crack of thunder, so loud in his mind. It’s a symphony of alarm bells, Matt wakes suddenly from his trance, and at first the horror is so complete that all Matt can do is feel it.

It feels like a lifetime, but really Matt hesitates only for half a second. He pries the burner out of his pocket, flings it accurately at the sobbing mess of a man by his side. “Call for help,” he tells him as he bends down to the corpse. His hands are numb, an icy chill snaking all the way up his arms. He can’t stop his breathing from shaking his ribcage on its way out. The galloping beat of his own heart is too loud, he can’t hear, he needs to hear.

He stacks his hands and places them neatly on the corpse’s sternum. He pumps once, twice. Gags when the bones shift, a mesh of splints, disorderly like puzzle pieces. He pumps again, feels the heart glug in response. A gurgle of air seeps out of the man’s mouth, bubbly and sour, blood and saliva. Matt pumps again.

Behind him, the friend is on the phone. Matt hears the conversation like he is watching the whole scene from above.

_911 what’s your emergency?_

_Daredevil killed my friend! Help! He killed him!_

“No!” Matt screams. It comes out hoarse. He can’t seem to catch his breath. His lungs flutter, his heart picks up speed. Matt keeps pumping, tries to count to thirty, loses his way, starts again. He pumps harder, he thinks he does, he can’t tell, it’s all numb, his hands are tingling, his arms are tingling. Matt can’t breathe, but he doesn’t stop. He can’t stop. The pressure wells in the chest, grows like a tide, fluid everywhere, mixed with tiny bubbles of air that fizzle like champagne and line up next to each other in the cavity.

“You killed my friend. You killed him!”

_No_ , Matt wants to say again. He didn’t. He can’t have. He didn’t mean to. He just wanted it to stop. He wanted it all to stop.

_Please_ , he begs the unbeating heart. _Please_.

The glugging stops when his hands do, when the heart is no longer forced to squeeze. The silence coats Matt like a layer of ice.

*

Death slithers under Matt’s hands, greets him like an old friend. It’s more than a passing wave. It’s a nod. It’s a promise. They’ve met before. They’ll meet again.

*

The corpse loses heat in streams of steam that glow ruby and gold, the shades of a sunset, of a day ending. They are almost beautiful in the dark alley.

*

The man with the broken legs sobs, burner tight in his hands. He waits for the sound of sirens as he watches the devil morph into a broken man.

*

Matt drowns.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case you are having Season 2 flash-backs of you screaming ‘WTF ARE YOU DOING MATT!’ at the screen – me too. I know in theory the writer has control of the story, but I can assure you, that in this case, I DO NOT. I’m not sure who I’ve been possessed by (who hates Matt enough? Fisk? Stick? Elektra in a weird bout of jealousy? Ed Sheeran? Not sure), but I’m merely here to be used as fingers to type and the occasional grammar and spell-check. So hate me all you want, but this is not my fault. I need an exorcism.
> 
> P.S. I’msorryI’msorryI’msorryI’msorryI’msorry!
> 
> P.P.S. You comments are phenomenal and I love you all.


	5. Chapter 5

_Sat in the corner of the room_

_Everything's reminding me of you_

_Nursing an empty bottle_

_And telling myself you're happier, aren't you?_

Silence.

Matt thinks it’s something he’s never known having grown up in Hell’s kitchen. Even before, when noises were just noises.

It’s not exactly silent now, not the way he’d imagined it to be. The world is just not loud enough to cover the screaming from within.

He thinks he hears the alarm clock blare. He thinks his phone keeps ringing, different names more rhythmic than the vibrations, clamoring for a response. The whole world is poised and ready for a new day. 

His eyes open, then shut. The world stays black.

He thinks of lying on his other side. Maybe he sleeps.

Agony is four notes that play on a loop in his head.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok, before you kill me for delivering such a short chapter, please don't. I haven't run out of things to say. Depression, the way I see it, is just this. An endless swirling void of emptiness and pain. Let Matt wallow in it for a little while. You can have the next chapter in a couple of days, and it's definitely longer :)
> 
> On another note, as ceterisparibus very smartly pointed out, it may not be feasible for me to drag you all out of this mess in only 3 chapters. I hope you won't mind if I end up extending this fic a little. I won't drag it out, but I don't see a point in messing it up just to make it fit. I'm also starting to struggle with my 'a chapter every couple of days' promise. Work is crazy and writing a depressed Matt is...draining. I've added all these trigger warnings and haven't stopped to consider how it would affect me! I'm trying to write in short bursts and then doing something happy (and yes, also googled how Charlie Cox dealt with filming season 3 cos that can't have been easy on the soul!). So please be patient, I'll do my very best to get the rest of this story out to you as soon as I can.
> 
> Finally, let me thank you all, once again, for your comments. The outrage on behalf of Karen still makes me laugh. Your reactions to everything make this all worth it. You are all so brilliant, I hope you know that.


	6. Chapter 6

_Oh, ain't nobody hurt you like I hurt you_

_But ain't nobody need you like I do_

_I know that there's others that deserve you_

_But my darlin', I am still in love with you_

A lifetime passes in small exhausting increments that Matt can’t fully perceive. Time is a concept for the living, an illusion made of numbers and ticking clock hands that wave the day away as they pass. There’s no space for time in agony. Agony is now. Agony is forever. Agony is all that Matt knows.

*

It's hard to tell what’s real, eventually. The screaming, the sobbing, the blood that won’t stop dripping from his hands, no matter how much Matt wipes them on his bed sheets.

_Daredevil killed my friend._

He can feel the heart stop, he can _feel_ it, every time, right before the numbness. Numbness that wipes the world away, the numbness that hurts even more.

*

He’s not sure if the key grazing his lock is real, if the frantic hands that can’t hold the key steady exist. His door bursts open like it’s going to fall off its hinges.

“Matt?! Matt are you here?”

Footsteps, running closer. It sounds like Foggy’s heart. Matt waits for it to stop too. His fingers start tingling in anticipation.

“Oh thank God...Matt? Matt are you hurt?”

Matt’s cold. Cold inside. Cold everywhere.

“Jesus Matt, you…you are covered in blood…I…shit! Shit. Matt?”

Foggy is screaming, Matt knows that, understands that. He’s not sure why he can’t hear Foggy, why it sounds like he is whispering from one end of the tunnel. His hands are flapping desperately on his frozen limbs, patting him down, like they are on an exciting treasure hunt. It’s annoying, as gentle as the jostling is, it keeps zinging his senses alive, sending new waves of pain through him, like he is giving his body hints of how to make Matt hurt in new and different ways.

“Matt? Matty say something? I can’t…I can’t find the bleeding. Matt? Buddy?”

Matt thought he’d left Matt Murdock behind when the building collapsed on him. The thought almost makes him laugh now. No. This is where Matt Murdock stops. Where the devil stops. Where it all stops. The end.

“Matt, your hands…Hey Matt, can you hear me? It’s Foggy, buddy, it’s Foggy. _Please_. Please Matty, say something.”

Foggy sounds terrified, his pleas running into each other. Fat tears plop on Matt’s wrists like raindrops. They are warm, but their heat stays there, on the surface of his skin.

The taste of Foggy’s tears would have been enough to cripple him on a normal day. Not today though. Today, there is nothing left to break.

Foggy calls Claire. His near hysteria makes his voice splinter as he tries to explain what he doesn’t understand. Claire rushes through some first aid checks that Foggy administers as best as he can, with Matt a rag doll in his arms. The line goes dead when she promises she is on her way.

Foggy never let’s go of Matt’s hand.

*

“I’m telling you, he is fine, Foggy,” Claire sounds tired, “physically, at least.”

Foggy doesn’t believe her, just as he didn’t the other ten times Claire repeated her diagnosis. His heart is so loud when he worries, it roars with activity.

“Something’s wrong Claire, he’s never…even after Midland Circle, he wasn’t like this…”

“I mean, he’s clearly punched his hands into minced meat. I’m pretty sure that at least a few of the bones are broken, but without an x-ray or Matt’s help, I can’t know for sure.”

“But Matt’s had worse. He was up and running within twelve hours of getting shot in the head, for Christ’s sake…I…”

“That’s what I’m saying Foggy. This time it’s not something physical.”

There’s a short, loaded silence.

“Have you…Foggy, it’s all over the news.”

“I know Claire, I know. It’s just not him, you know? I don’t understand. Matt’s never…not before.”

“Have you tried talking to him?”

“I did, he doesn’t respond. Are you sure it’s not his hearing again?”

“I checked Foggy, there’s no sign of head trauma.”

“But why…he hasn’t said a word! I don’t understand...”

The sound of skin on skin. Maybe hands holding. Or a pat to the cheek.

“He’ll talk when he’s ready, Foggy.”

Matt doesn’t want to hear anymore.

*

“Is he here? Is he hurt?”

Matt heard her approach from three blocks away, the sound of her pulse getting cleaner and cleaner with every angry flap of her flat shoes. He could smell her from around the block, and this time, mercifully, his perception was jumbled enough to tune out anything that wasn’t her.

Matt’s breathing her in like a lifeline now, honing in on each one of her details. He’s clamped-up tight on his side, shivering, he can’t stop shivering. But his head twitches every time she walks, keeping tempo with her steps, while his inhales are getting longer, deeper, tongue probing and ravenous as it tastes his surroundings, looking for her. As always he is torn, tearing, crisp and flaky and soft, like a freshly-baked loaf of bread, Matt knows he doesn’t deserve to bury his nose in her hair or to rest his ear on her chest. He knows he doesn’t deserve any bit of her, any bit of absolution from his sins. But by God, _he_ _wants it_.

Foggy moves to block the door before Karen can find a way to wedge herself in the tiny crack that Foggy opened to check who was knocking so angrily.

“I swear to God Foggy, if you don’t let me through–”

“Karen, just stop for a second! Stop!” His door squeaks, too many shoulders pound against it. Feet shuffle and the door bounces off rubber. Matt guesses Karen stuck her foot in the door so that Foggy couldn’t shut it in her face.

“Foggy!” She sounds enraged, “I need to see him. Matt?” She calls over his shoulder.

Oh, why is his name so much more beautiful when it’s on her lips? It shreds him to ribbons as it travels down his spine.

“Karen, no. Stop. Wait, just listen to me for a second,” more scuffling. It sounds like Foggy is losing, but Matt is not sure if it is because he wouldn’t dare harm her, or if Karen is just that fierce. Matt thinks it’s the latter.

“Not sure what you can’t say to me from the other side of the door,” she hisses. Foggy goes for a strange compromise, opens the door wide and steps outside himself, bodily manhandling Karen into the corridor with him, then shuts the front door behind them.

“Now what did you go and do that for?!” Karen is furious, her flushed skin full of secrets that are not for Matt to read.

“You wouldn’t listen to me. Just listen to me, ok? Karen!”

“What. Foggy. WHAT.”

“I need you to go to the office today. _We_ ,” Foggy corrects, when Karen emits a noise that could only be perceived as an infuriated roar, “ _we_ need you at the office.”

“You go to the office Foggy. I’ll stay here.”

“Karen, listen to me. We’ve got this, ok? We’ve got this. You need to go to the office. We need someone there to keep things going, sort out the clients. _Please,_ Karen. Trust me on this one.”

“We?! Who’s we?”

“I called Claire, I wasn’t sure…the nurse, you remember her?”

“Foggy, if you called Claire, it means he’s hurt. Fuck. Let me in. NOW.”

A whine of longing builds in the back of Matt’s throat. It has nowhere to go but as a low exhale out of his nostrils.

“He’s not hurt. He’s fine. I’ve got this Karen, please. Just go to the office.”

_Go Karen. Just go_ , Matt wills her, even as his chin tilts lower to meet his chest, freeing his other ear from the muggy hush of his pillow.

  
“He needs his friends,” the word _friend_ s ripples through Matt, “he needs us. I’m not going to turn my back on him now, not after…oh Foggy, it’s everywhere.”

“I know. Fuck. I know.”  
  


“Has he said anything? I don’t…was it a Fisk thing?”  
  


“I don’t know, he’s not…he’s not really himself right now.”

“Foggy, _please_. Let me help.”

“You can help Karen, but right now what we need is someone at the office to cover our tracks, someone to keep the business going until we sort this out. I need you to help me keep a clear head so that I can be there for Matt. Please Karen, I’d trust you with my life, there is no one better to take care of Nelson, Murdock and Page than you right now. You know that.”

Karen’s resolves is wavering even as she shakes her head. Matt can hardly tell when her hair is up. It’s the few loose strands that give her away when they swing against her face.

“I’ll keep you posted. Do this for us. Keep up appearances, just for a day. I trust you, Karen. I need you to trust me too.”

There it is, the closing argument. The reason why Nelson is the deadly part of their duo, and not Murdock. Foggy slides under your skin with his unassuming charm, then goes straight for the heart.

“Tell him…tell him I’m here for him, ok?”

“I will Karen,” Foggy begins, but Karen is not done.

“Tell him…tell him I understand.”

The cowl catches most of Matt’s tears as they chase each other down his cheeks. A few land on his fist when he bites it hard not to scream. There are moments where the rope feels like it’s the only thing keeping him from shattering, crumbling, like a sandcastle on a shore.

_Tell him I understand._

Matt tastes blood as Karen’s steps carry her down the stairs. Foggy shuts the door with a defeated sigh.

*

His screen door slides open. Matt’s not sure why they bother shutting it. It’s not like it conceals them from his perception.

Foggy slides it shut again before he makes his way to Matt’s side, like he is trying to contain the crazy to one room. He needn’t worry. The crazy is one with Matt now. It doesn’t want to go anywhere else.

The mattress dips on the side that Matt is facing. Matt’s too tired to turn. He curls tighter into a ball.

“Hey Matty, it’s me. It’s Foggy.”

Draining thoughts crawl inside Matt’s skull. None make it to his lips. Foggy’s hands wonder up and down his arms, then retreat before they can make contact.

“I got you some food. Think you are up to it?”

Matt hadn’t noticed the tray resting on his nightstand. He could probably determine exactly what is on the plate with one whiff if he wanted to. He could probably even find out if it was Foggy or Claire that poured the glass of water, trace the water all the way to its source. He could. He doesn’t.

“I thought not…” Foggy mumbles.

His arm moves again, this time his fingers caress the bottom of the cowl that Matt is still wearing. They pry the edge up, just a smidge. Matt almost growls, makes Foggy jump back in fear.

“Okok, by all means, keep it on. You do realize you are still wearing your Daredevil outfit, man, right? Gloves? Ropes? Boots? Your shirt is more blood than shirt, Matt. You can’t be comfortable…and it’s freezing in here…How about we take it off, huh? Change into a pair of sweats maybe? Try putting some of those expensive silk sheets on? What do you say, buddy?”

Matt doesn’t say anything. He has nothing to say. This is who he is now, there is no point in changing any part of it. He uses every ounce of strength he has left to turn to his other side. The movement wakes the nightmare again, pokes the monster. Matt starts rubbing his knuckles on his sheets before he feels the blood start pouring out like a fountain.

“Matt?” Foggy sounds worried, and tired, so tired. When was the last time he slept? When was the last time any of them slept? Matt’s not sure how long it has been since…well. Since the end. It doesn’t matter, not really.

Foggy stands and seems to watch Matt for an age, watch him try to stop the bleeding, watch him listen to the heart stop. When he moves, it’s gentle. He puts one of his hands on Matt’s, and the weight and the heat is enough to deplete Matt’s energies. Matt’s hands still, the blood dripping out doesn’t.

“There’s no blood, Matty,” Foggy says gently, like he is talking to a scared child, and Matt’s too busy to try to understand how Foggy knows, “no one is bleeding. Here, feel it Matt,” he delicately pulls off one of Matt’s gloves. The pain is excruciating. Matt knows it is, but he can’t feel it at all. Foggy takes his wrist and presses the pads of Matt’s fingers against the silk sheets, “no blood here buddy. Feel it? No blood.”

Matt’s silk sheets are slippery and coarse with dirt, but dry. So dry. But Matt can _hear_ it, the blood, the pumping, the glugging. It’s slowing, pausing, stopping. He’s going to die. _The man is going to die_.

“No one here, Matty, just you and me,” shit, was he talking out loud, “it’s Foggy, you know me,” he takes Matt’s wrist again, this time places Matt’s fingers against his chest, “no one is dying Matt, no one. You hear me? It’s just me and you buddy. Am I lying?”

Foggy’s heart beats _truth, truth, truth_ , strong and healthy and loud. Matt is scared to trust it. Matt is scared.

Foggy keeps his hand on his chest for a long time, long enough for the numbness to subside once more. Matt’s not strong enough to keep his hand raised, but Foggy knows. He is strong for both of them. He stays quiet until Matt’s breathing evens out. Then –

“What happened, Matt?”

He asks so quietly, so patiently. So…so… _calmly_. Like Matt can provide all the answers and it’s all going to be ok.

Matt pulls his hand back. He wants to ball it into a fist to hide it even better, but his fingers don’t seem to work right. There’s swelling, there’s screeching. It’s all wrong.

He shuts his eyes to stop himself from thinking, scrunches them tight against the words that are right there, waiting to swallow him whole.

_Daredevil killed my friend._

Matt’s lungs close of their own accord.

“Hey Matt, breathe. Just breathe,” Matt doesn’t have the strength to squirm away from Foggy’s grasp, pressing down on his shoulder, not when his lungs are flapping uselessly in his chest. He can’t stop the soft keening sounds that are piling up in his throat as he gasps for air.

Foggy pushes him onto his back and pulls him up like he is an infant, with two hands under his armpits, until Matt is sitting up, chest heaving against the headboard.

“Hey, hey, hey, slow it down Matty,” he places a warm palm in the center of his chest like it can keep it from shaking, “come on, deep breath, slow, you can do this.”

“I can’t…I can’t…” _I can’t breathe_ , he wants to scream, but there’s not enough air. His lungs burn, his head spins, his heart races empty blood around his veins. He wrenches the cowl off his face, throws it to the side. His skin flares alive when the cold air meets his damp skin.

“You can, Matty, come on. For me, do it for me. I know you can do this. Come on, feel it, like me. One breath, slow, suck it in, hold it in,” Foggy takes his naked hand again, forces it on his chest so that Matt can feel what he can’t hear, the solid push and pull of air going in and out of Foggy’s chest, “like me, Matty. In, now,” he shows Matt, takes a deliberately deep slow breath.

Matt can’t, Matt can’t, Matt’s going to die, he’s going to die and he…he’s so…so… _relieved_.

“Come on Matt, buddy, don’t do this. You can’t do this to me. Try Matt, try, please, for me. Just try,” Foggy’s voice is wavering, in and out of Matt’s awareness, like bad reception. His heart is racing, but maybe it will stop soon, just like the man’s did. He wants to wrench his hands free, the bleeding will start soon too, he needs to press down on it, like Stick taught him. _Steady pressure. It’ll stop now_.

There’s shouting that doesn’t belong in his body, out of his head.

(“Claire? Claire! Help him, Claire, HELP HIM!”)

“Hey Matt, it’s Claire. You’re ok, can you take a deep breath for me?”

Matt’s chest is shut, his shoulders heaving uselessly as he suffocates. White spots are popping like fireworks, lighting up the perpetual darkness. He can’t get his hands free of Foggy’s grasp. There’s so much blood he can _smell it_ , why can’t they see it.

“Matt? You are having an anxiety attack. It might feel like you can’t breathe, but you can, ok? Try Matt. Breathe. I know you can hear our lungs. Make yours the same. Come on.”

Claire’s voice is so beautiful, her breathing even more so. It’s so even, so safe. _Not today, Claire_ , he thinks, _not this time_. Today is the day that Matt has nothing left to give. Today is the day the world sees Matt for the disappointment that he is.

“Matt, it’s all in your head. Let it out. Come on.”

“I…I…” Matt’s voice is hoarse, fractured, a faint breeze in a tornado.

“Say it. Say it out loud. Whatever is in your head, say it.”

“I want to die,” Matt whispers, an apology half framed on his lips. There’s not enough air to set it free.

There’s a sharp intake that sounds like Foggy, and for a second the roaring in his ears makes the world blank, perfectly quiet.

_God, forgive me_ , he thinks, before it all fades out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok so a couple of notes:  
> 1) Medically speaking, you can't technically pass out if you are having a panic attack, because your blood pressure spikes instead of lowering. However, this is Matt we are talking about, and he is a stubborn-ass who has decided to stop breathing. And I'm pretty sure you pass out if you stop breathing.  
> 2) As you may or may not have noticed, I am quickly running out of lyrics. Short of me writing to Ed Sheeran and asking him if he could extend his song just a little cos it turns out that I don't have enough of it for my fic...I'm turning to you instead. Anyone know a song that could work here? Doesn't need to be Ed Sheeran, we can blame him anyways. Suggestions welcome!  
> 3) Readers, wonderful readers, I wouldn't be anything without you. You are my heroes, all of you, from the ones who are brave enough to comment to those of you who follow me quietly. Please take care of yourself and don't let this fic (or the current state of the world) get you down. <3


	7. Chapter 7

_Take the blade away from me_

_I am a freak, I am afraid that_

_All the blood escaping me won't end the pain_

_And I'll be haunting all the lives that cared for me_

_I died to be the white ghost_

_Of the man that I was meant to be_

_~ **Ghost** by **Badflower**_

Voices whisper in and out of his consciousness, slosh around his skull like surfs in a tempest. They sound upset; mouths full of tears. Matt only catches slivers before they pop back out of his awareness, as light and delicate as soap-bubbles.

“…Fuck, fuck, fuck, shit, shit, Claire!”

“He just passed out, Foggy. He’ll be fine. His mind just needs a second to reset.”

“He’s so…pale, so cold…I…”

“Foggy-”

“He said it Claire. Did you hear him? He…what if he somehow managed to-”

“What, spontaneously drop dead? No. It’s not that easy, no matter what he said. The body has ways to protect itself.”

Silence. Two sets of lungs breathing out of sync, and a third, more even, slower, in his chest. Matt stirs he is so surprised to have lungs again, then bites back the splash of bile that runs up his throat.

“Matty?” Foggy’s hand is on his arm, his voice is wet. No. That’s his face. His whole face is wet. Salty. Flushed. Matt’s tongue feels swollen, dry. He smacks his lips a couple of time, trying to disperse the heaviness. His stomach heaves, twists and rolls heavily, a boulder on a slope.

“Oh Matt,” the whole bed shakes like there’s an earthquake, but no, it’s just Foggy. Foggy…sobbing, “don’t ever do that to me again. You hear me? Don’t ever-”

“Foggy.” Claire admonishes quietly. The shaking stops. No. Moves. Matt’s head twitches to follow it. It makes Foggy try to step closer again, only to collide with a smack against Claire’s hands on his chest, “let’s go eat?”

She says it like it’s a question but it feels more like an order. Foggy obviously makes a face because she speaks before he is done taking his tell-tale half-inhale, “let him rest. He’ll be here when we are done. _Trust me_.”

The look on her face must be fierce to make Foggy trudge his way back to the kitchen with defeated footsteps. Matt expects Claire to leave too, and he thinks she does, at first. His senses are not quite back yet, some still busy blanking out.

She reappears in the slope of the mattress, her soft almost chapped skin close to his forehead. The smell of antiseptic and industrial soap is forever impregnated in each of her cells, but Matt finds he doesn’t mind it. It has something familiar about it, something reassuring, even when it burns faintly as it travels through Matt’s nostrils. She pushes his hair out of his clammy forehead, but the gesture is not clinical. It reminds Matt of a tenderness he lost, one he’s forgotten how to crave. Her thumb traces down from his temple to the dip in his chin. Matt’s eyes flit open in response.

Claire sighs, a slow, sad sound, then pushes her fingers through his hair. It’s all a tangled, sweaty mess after wearing the cowl for so long, but she doesn’t seem to mind. She combs through the tougher knots with her fingers, smooths his locks down. Matt doesn’t want to be, but he is lulled by the motion, and his eyes shut on instinct, breathing slow and even.

“Sleep Matt,” she whispers before she places a light kiss on his forehead. She’s gone then. Matt hears her take a container out of Foggy’s hands, the clink of forks. It’s all so distant, even when it’s right there.

It’s a while before Matt realizes that they left his bedroom door open behind them.

*

It’s harder to track them when his door is left ajar. Sometimes they slip inside just to stare at him and vanish just as quietly. Other times, Matt’s only alerted of their presence when their hands touch him unexpectedly.

He’s so tired, he barely jolts when he feels them near. He skims in and out of awareness, but it’s not sleep. It’s more like a deep state of dazed, something he’d compare to a meditative trance. Except this time it covers the pain in a layer of nothing that makes Matt unable to pin-point exactly where it hurts. He just knows that it does.

*

_Karen, Karen, Karen, Karen._

Matt’s phone shrills her name, insistent, unrelenting. Another call, another voicemail that will go unanswered. Matt has lost count of the calls he missed, of the time he spent feeling the phone vibrate in his bones. His phone draws short circles on his nightstand, always moving closer and closer to the edge, only to turn back on its tail.

_Karen, Karen, Karen, Karen._

That damn phone that is always bleeping to be charged is suddenly filled with infinite stubbornness, just like her. Matt grinds his forehead against the pillow, while his mind parrots back, _Karen, Karen, Karen, Karen._

He can’t. He just can’t.

Stop. _Stop. STOP._

The vibrations cease, the phone quietens, inanimate once again. Matt breathes out a low exhale in relief, but finds the quiet unexpectedly jarring in its emptiness. His arm slides out from under the thin sheet, reaches out a little, ghosting timidly towards his nightstand like it could feel the echo of her name.

How can he miss something he never had? He doesn’t deserve, he doesn’t deserve, he doesn’t…

Another phone rings with a generic pre-recorded tune that Matt can’t recognize.

“Yup, hey, hi…oh, hi Karen,” Foggy’s answer is groggy, like he just woke up. Matt’s not sure what time it is, his senses so tangled up in his own head that the world outside has become a mystery, out of reach. He snakes his arm back quickly, hides it against his chest. His heart bumps unsteadily against the back of his hand, pushes blood too noisily in his ears.

“…his phone? Uh, no, I’m not sure where it is,” Foggy’s lies draw Matt back from his own head.

“Put him on, I want to speak to him,” comes Karen’s voice, faint and crackling through Foggy’s speaker.

“Oh, ummm,” Foggy’s body slinks closer tentatively. Matt shakes his head quickly, “ah, he’s asleep Karen, maybe later?”

Karen scoffs, “Matt doesn’t sleep.”

“He’s asleep now. Eyes closed, he’s even snoring. Keeps me awake, heh. He’s..umm..he’s…tired,” Matt wishes he could glare at Foggy. How did he keep Karen appeased all these months with excuses of Matt’s ‘drinking problem’ when he’s such a bad liar?

“Just put him on Foggy.”

Foggy shuffles forward reluctantly, cotton rustling when he shrugs in apology. His fingers shift and dead air suddenly fills the room.

“Matt?”

It’s a slow tear, trickling like ice in his veins. Matt can’t stop his head from twisting towards her voice.

“Come on Matt, I know you can hear me,” she sighs, softly. Matt can almost see the air move her chest. He pictures the fabric sliding over her skin, how it moves like a crisp layer of frost to make space for all her emotions. His fingers clench over nothing, making his knuckles scream.

“Look…I…” something shifts, light, feathery. It might be her hair. Matt would be able to smell it, if she were here. Would it make him feel better, to have her near? To listen to her heart narrate her feelings before she can speak? He clamps his lips shut and moves away from the phone even as Foggy places it on the pillow by his head.

“I know how this part feels, Matt,” her voice weavers, thins, “I can’t say I’m the advocate for good mental health, I think you and Foggy can testify that I didn’t handle it perfectly when it was my turn, but…I guess I just wished I…I wished I had someone I could talk to when…”

Foggy makes a move like he wants to pick the receiver back up but then thinks better of it. Matt’s hand freezes an inch from the little screen that is radiating subtle warmth. He didn’t realize he’d been moving.

“I know you guys would’ve, _been there_ , I know that now. I was just…scared. Stupid. I-”

A man’s voice, on the other side. Karen’s tone changes infinitesimally, becomes lighter, brighter, younger. _I’ll be right there_ , she says, her hand covering the receiver, _just give me a sec_.

“I…I have to go. I’ll call you soon, ok? I…just pick-up ok, Matt? Or maybe I could come by? Would you…shit. Don’t…don’t shut us out. We…ah. We care about you. I…I c-care about you. Ok. Ummm…Think about it, ok? I…yeah. Bye.”

The line goes dead with a dull beep and for a moment it feels like the oxygen has been sucked out of the room. Foggy snatches the phone off the pillow before Matt can fling it across the room. He stands by the door, quiet but for his breathing, and watches Matt tremble back into a ball. No matter what he heard, no matter what he saw, Foggy never says a word. And Matt’s not sure if Foggy’s silence is filled with questions or answers.

*

Time continues to shift in predictable patterns that Matt remarks in useless details. Pressure mounting in the rusting pipes, artificially sweetened gullies of steam that eek out between floorboards, gas hobs roaring on and hissing shut, a million conversations, some real, some unnatural, blared out of speakers, televisions, laptops, phones. Matt feels like he is continually engulfed by a chattering crowd that has nothing to say.

His guardians stay quiet though, as they rove around him. Like vultures waiting for a rotting carcass, they run around in circles, only leaving his side to run errands or stock-up on food. Foggy has set-up a semi-permanent office on his kitchen table, and the constant tap-tapping of his fingers on the keyboard reminds Matt of being stuck in a torrential downpour. But it’s the silence that unnerves him the most, the way they speak hushed and whispered, like they are on his deathbed.

And who knows. Maybe they are.

A few meals have gone by before Foggy tries to talk to him again. Matt’s lost count, ignored his stomach when it churned. Forgot the thirst that scratched at his throat.

“So I took five dollars out of your wallet, I hope you don’t mind,” he pauses for effect, continues when Matt doesn’t shift, “well, I just needed you to know that we have attorney-client privilege now, in case you were worried.”

Foggy moves closer. His knees bump the edge of the mattress, a tiny knock that makes Matt worry that he is going to shake loose. He bites back a hiss of pain.

“Or we can do it priest and catholic-guilt style?” Foggy continues, “I’m sure I can snag some holy water and incense if I ask nicely. Hide behind your sliding door, call you Matthew and force you to do some Hail Marys after?”

Foggy’s laughter dies soundlessly, before it even reaches his mouth, lost and forlorn. Foggy is looking for his friend in Matt’s shell-of-a-self, and Matt is not sure he can help him find him. He folds his legs on the corner of his bed, his back to Matt.

“Matty, you are my best friend. Fuck. Sometimes I feel like you are more of a brother to me than Theo ever was. You just…get me, you know? My family never quite…shit.”

He rubs his face in his hands, scrunches his hair up only to find it too short. He smells like Matt’s scent-free shampoo and Matt’s detergent and Matt’s leather couch. He smells more like Matt than Matt does.

“Look, I don’t know what happened or what you did, but it…It doesn’t matter, ok? I don’t care what you did, I’m not going anywhere. I’ll be right here, by your side, where I belong.”

Something clenches within Matt. He opens his eyes and finds them wet with an unexpected layer of moisture that gives him away. But it’s not enough. He is not enough. He’ll hurt Foggy too. He’ll ruin them all. They’ll burn and he’ll stand witness, smelling their charring flesh, holding the still-smoking match.

“I just need you to tell me what happened, ok? I just need you to tell someone, because I can’t see you like this anymore.”

How can Foggy not see the monster he has become? How can he sit there and hear people calling him the ‘devil’ and have no idea of the ugly that is within? Matt can’t bear to be within his own skin anymore. He wants out. He wishes Foggy would just let him go.

Foggy turns, seemingly checking that Matt is still breathing. Matt’s not sure what he finds, but it seems it’s reassuring enough to egg him on.

“Matt the news…we woke up and it was on all the channels, the newspapers. They said that you…they called you ‘the butcher’ of Hell’s Kitchen. Broken legs and this man, this man was…someone took a picture, it leaked. I don’t, Matt, I don’t understand…”

It takes Matt a while to respond. And it’s not the tiredness, or the weakness, or the numbness. It’s not the words that won’t form a single file in his head, or the ones that will linger permanently at the back of his throat. No. Matt pauses to study the fissure, the tiny crack of doubt that taints Foggy’s words, the one that Matt knows he’ll have to prize open, take a sharp knife and tug and tug and tug. Matt will need to tug until Foggy breaks. And just the thought is too much, with Foggy standing so close, smelling like a life they built together, pulsing with trust and concern and…Friendship. Because Foggy still carries that faint whiff of youth, of recklessness and hope, big dreams and absolutely no money. And he sounds…God, he sounds like home, like laughter that rises from the belly and smiling just because. And so Matt takes a second, one extra second to just be here, next to Foggy, to be the best damn avocado and the man his friend hoped he would become, and even as he takes his last full breath, he feels eleven years old again, young and loved and naïve, beautifully unaware of how the world was about to crumble from under his legs.

“My grandma…she used to say that…uh. She used to say, be careful of the Murdock boys, they got the devil in them,” Matt starts, his words itching out of his parched throat. Foggy wordlessly presses a glass of water that Matt forgot to notice in his hands, helps him guide it to his chapped lips when his arms tremble with weakness and his fingers refuse to grasp properly. He downs the water so fast it’s almost an inhale, then coughs weakly as his insides roar for more. Foggy almost chuckles when Matt reaches for the bottle that is waiting on the nightstand.

“Go on,” he presses.

“I used to see it in my dad. Sometimes, when he boxed,” Foggy uncaps the bottle for him, “his eyes would go all dead and he would walk forward real slow, like he wasn’t afraid of anything.”

The bottle empties quickly, loosening his pulse, words wanting to be set free before Matt is ready. He takes a breath, snatching a glimpse of his father and his demon. It vanishes in wisps of smoke even as Matt licks his lips. 

“When I was young I didn’t understand, I didn’t know. But it grew in me too. The devil. I could feel it Foggy, scratching at my soul, clawing to be let out.”

Foggy shifts minutely, his breaths shortening, hitching, tentative, like they are using up the last air in the room.

“I killed him, Foggy. I killed that man because I couldn’t stop, because I didn’t _want_ to stop,” Matt’s voice is strong, loud, clear. He needs Foggy to understand. He needs Foggy to _see_. It’s time. It’s time to set him free.

But the horror that he expects doesn’t come.

“You WHAT?!” He screeches so loud that Matt jumps.

“I…k-killed him Foggy. I killed a man,” Matt enunciates it slowly. There can be no misunderstandings now.

“Uh…what are you talking about?!”

“The man...I…killed? Foggy, the newspapers, I thought you knew.”

Foggy’s heart continues to pump in mild concern, surprise even. When he steps closer, Matt is too astonished to move away.

“What? Matt. No. He’s alive.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted to post this on Monday but I can't with this chapter anymore. Just take it. 
> 
> So I have a plan! I spent a few hours surrounded by bits of lyrics and spreadsheets and bullet-point notes on what should happen when and go with which song and I HAVE A PLAN. Now I just have to get you all there in one piece...and myself.
> 
> Readers, first of all thank you for all your song suggestions. They are all almost annoyingly perfect, and I have found a way to include each one in the next chapters. If you don't see yours appear yet, bear with me, it has a place in my story. This particular one was suggested by the lovely caribmermaid, so extra thank you to her for this chapter!
> 
> Thanks AGAIN for your continued support. I enjoy reading your comments more than I do reading any other fic, and I just hope to do you justice. Do let me know if the style is not working for you here, I worry there's too much description or too little or the dialogue is getting confusing (I just WORRY). I'm not used to people giving a crap about what happens in one of my stories, I just don't want to disappoint. I love each and every one of you, and please, go do something happy after you read my fics <3
> 
> (P.S. I keep forgetting to mention: I'm wawaluxthings on tumblr - come say hi!)


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Since it's been a few days: Matt just found out that he didn't in fact kill the man.

_So, before you go_

_Was there something I could've said_

_To make your heart beat better?_

_If only I'd have known you had a storm to weather_

_So, before you go_

_Was there something I could've said_

_To make it all stop hurting?_

_It kills me how your mind can make you feel so worthless_

_~ **Before you go** by **Lewis Capaldi**_

Matt utters a single strangled: 'what' that scratches his throat and even raises his head from the pillow.

“Is this what this is? Did you think you killed him?” Foggy moves closer, takes Matt's wrist and Matt lets him, let’s the steady reassurance that this is real, this is right now, bleed into his arm. It feels warm, scalding even after the continuous frost from the past few days.

“No. No. NO! Matt. Listen to me. The man is alive. He’s alive, you hear me?”

Matt shakes his head like it will make the words fit better in his skull, that thick sludge of uncertainty still so hard to remove. He feels like he is trying to clear fog with determined swipes of his hands, and every time, it just slips right past his fingers.

“I don’t…I don’t understand. He died. I felt it…I…”

  
  
“Well, he’s not exactly going to be jumping around anytime soon. Fourteen-hour surgery, he’s in a medically induced coma, still in intensive care. They had to fly in all sorts of experts from Seattle and all over. But you didn’t _kill_ him.”

Something small and tender tries to grow in Matt’s chest, pushes its way past the grime and the dirt and the dark, nudging stubbornly towards the light. It’s gone before it can find roots. Matt stays motionless on the spot, head spinning in uneven circles, like that bottle that can’t decide your fate.

Meanwhile, Foggy starts laughing in relief, convinced, unsurprisingly, that he found the poisonous needle; that he pulled it out. It’s a while before the look on Matt’s face registers, before Foggy understands that Matt’s blank stare is not just shock. That Matt, the Matt he knew, the Matt he is trying to save, is truly gone. His laughter dies with a low hiss, stomach still rolling in empty waves of glee, and the smile loses its grip, falls straight off his face.

“No, Foggy. I…I killed him,” Matt says patiently, “he just didn’t die.”

He tries to meet Foggy’s stare then, directs what he hopes are his irises towards the air that he can hear moving up and down his nose, and then a little higher up, towards the gentle gaze that he knows would meet his if he could only ever truly open his eyes.

It feels like Foggy is waiting for the punch line. He stays immobile except for the listless movements of his lips that are framing soundless words.

“No,” he says eventually, “no, you didn’t Matt. I…You…you wouldn’t. You never…You wouldn’t.”

Matt waits, feeling like Foggy’s eyes are slowly cracking open, like he is finally seeing what he has always refused to believe. The devil, the monster that Matt has always tried to keep at bay, locked in the shadows, hidden within, is now wearing Matt’s skin. And Matt is just as disappointed to find him under Foggy’s scrutiny as Foggy is.

“No,” he says again, tightening his grip on Matt’s forearm. Matt just shakes his head tiredly.

“Ok. You killed him,” Foggy’s pulse picks-up, a war drum, “walk me through it, Matt.”

“What?”

“Tell me how. How did you kill him? How did it happen?”

“It doesn’t matter how,” Matt’s had enough. He wants to sleep. He knows he won’t.

“It does to me Matty. Come on, indulge me. Start from the top.”

Matt stays silent. Thoughts crawl like ants in his brain, itchy and unwanted.

“Ok, ok, I’ll start,” says Foggy, like this is just another case that they need to crack, “I’m Daredevil, doing my nightly rounds. I come across two bozos, very bad bozos mind, and I think to myself: ‘I must stop them from corrupting Hell’s Kitchen.’ But bozos be bozos, one of them pulls out a gun and the other is stupid enough to use his fists. So, you start hitting them. And then what.”

“I told you Foggy, he…died. I hit him until he died…”

It’s strange how easily these words come to his lips now, when for days they were too loud for him to even think about.

“How did you know he was dead?”

“I…you know this. I can hear…hearts beating. I heard it stop.”

“So you heard the heart stop and you kept hitting?”

“I..well. No. I…”

“No?”

“I…stopped.”

“You stopped when, Matt. When the heart stopped? Before?”

“Yeah..I don’t know.”

“Ok, tell me this, when the heart stopped. What did you do?”

“I…nothing. I…”

“You what, come on Matt…you wiped your fingers on the pavement? You tried to hide the body? You decided to kill the other witness? You hightailed it out of there?”

“Foggy, I can’t…I…”

“You can, Matt.”

“This doesn’t matter!” His anger bursts out of his exhaustion, makes his head spin with the effort.

“Maybe not Matt, but maybe it does.”

“WHY?!”

“Because I know you Matt. I know you, even with your secrets and lies and silences. And the Matt that I know, the Matt that is hiding behind that stupid mask, would never have killed that man. The Matt that I know breaks bones and beats people to a pulp and then he sends them packing to the police station. The Matt that I know couldn’t kill Fisk even when he destroyed everything that he thought he knew about himself. My Matt, _our_ Matt? He let a building crush him to save a few extra lives. So tell me Matt, what did you do when you heard that heart stop?”

Matt shakes his head again. Foggy is right in his face, each word washing over his exposed skin, every breath staining his own and that heart, that heart that won’t stop hoping, screaming through every beat. Foggy is everything he can hear and feel and smell and taste and it’s _too much_.

Sirens wail in his memory, a piercing lament that somehow resembles that of the sobbing man. The flashing of blue and red lights is not something that Matt could see, but he felt it, in the faint click of the turbine as it neared its round. His hands were hastily brushed away when the EMT came, a fluster of Velcro straps and muted thudding, efficiency and barked orders. His wrists were snatched before the smell of death had began to fade from his fingertips, steel handcuffs pressed expertly against the rim of his gloves. The cop was young, his heart overexcited at having finally caught the devil, he’d pushed an inexplicably pliable Matt to the ground while rushing though his rights, his breath heavy with the shadow of cigarettes and stinted meals. Matt can still feel the graze of asphalt pressed against the side of his face, the sludgy wetness of cement that never dries and the imprint of one-thousand rushed footsteps. He stayed face-down on his knees long enough for the rookie to become confident, to get distracted by the frenzy of people trying to press life back into a corpse. He stayed face-down looking for the God that once again had left him behind.

It was a simple thought, clearest in all that was panic and dread, a small reminder that what hid under the cowl was more than just himself, it was Nelson and Murdock and Page, it was his mother and all the lives he had touched as Matt Murdock. Giving himself up now, even when justice would never bring him the punishment he deserved, would erase their lives just as quickly as they’d erase his.

When he moved, the cop barely even noticed. Matt struck with the back of his head, square on his nose. He swiped his legs from underneath him before the crunch of cartilage had stopped rebounding off the corners of the alley. The other cop was busy, EMT too distracted to pursue. Matt didn’t even bother dodging the gun shots as he followed the shadows home.

“Want me to guess again?” Foggy pulls Matt up by the scruff of his top. The congealed blood crackles against his chest, “the EMT said they got there just in time. That the guy had been legally dead for less than a minute, because someone had performed CPR.”

Matt pushes against Foggy’s hold, but Foggy pulls him up higher.

“Did you call for help? Did you try to do CPR on the guy?”

“It doesn’t matter, Foggy!”

“It matters to me, okay!”

“Why?!”

“Because my friend is not a murderer!”

“You're wrong Foggy. I _wanted_ him to die.”

“No. Because if you had truly wanted him to die, he would’ve been dead Matt.”

“He’s barely clinging on now,” Matt fires back, thinking of how pointless this is, wondering why Foggy won’t just let it go. Sometimes the magic solution is just not there.

“So what? You’ve left people hanging on by a thread before. Why is this guy any different?”

“He’s not. I…am. I’m not the person I thought I was.”

“So that’s it? You are just going to give up on a technicality?”

“It’s not a technicality-“

“-and what about the rest of us? What about the lives we built together? You are going to give them up too?”

“You don’t understand. You don’t know what I did.”

“I would if you’d just tell me?!”

Matt purses his lips and shakes his head harder.

“What? What’s so terrible Matt? Was it a racism thing? Can you suddenly smell skin color too? No? What else? Extra angry cos of indigestion? Bored because you couldn’t find your favorite podcast? Just testing out a newly acquired ninja skill? Pissed off cos you haven’t gotten laid since college?”

The last one is a joke, but it makes Matt’s breath hitch minutely. It’s less than a second before it resumes. And maybe, if he hadn’t been breathing so heavily, or if they weren’t so close to each other’s faces, Foggy wouldn’t have noticed. But he does.

He drops Matt like a hot potato. Matt would’ve landed sprawling onto the floor if he hadn’t been kneeling on the mattress. The motion still sends him back, crumpling on himself like a thin paper-tissue.

“What?” Foggy asks.

“No, Foggy. I…it wasn’t that…” a treacherous blush creeps steadily up his neck. He ducks his head to try and hide it, knowing that the movement alone makes him look guilty as hell.

“You…you kill people cos you are…what. Horny now?” Foggy wants to joke, he so badly wants to joke, even when his heart says it’s a lie. It’s all a lie. It’s a lie, right?

“Of course not. I…I…”

Foggy takes a step back, angles his head like it can help him see what Matt can’t say more clearly.

“What then, Matt?”

“I…I…” _say it Matt, say it damn it_. But the words don’t come, even when he wants them to. Matt is too selfish to let Foggy go.

_Karen, Karen, Karen, Karen._

It has to be an act of divine intervention, God bearing down on his sins and making him kneel before judgement. The way his damn phone pipes up just like that, as if in answer to Foggy’s question, brutal, and honest and fair, the way Matt can’t bring himself to be.

It doesn’t take long. A few seconds of that name, screamed dispassionately with every vibration, nail down the message faster than a hammer. Matt scrambles to silence the phone, even as his eyes close in defeat. He buries his face in his hands, scrapes his nails down over his features, hoping to uncover someone else under that first layer of skin.

_Karen, Karen, Karen, Karen_.

Foggy takes a step back and says: “No,” and then _no_ once again when Matt, finally, doesn’t contradict him.

“Karen…?”

Matt’s skin is stinging from where he scratched at it, but not enough, not enough to cover the sharp blade of Foggy’s disappointment.

“But you…but you…but you…” Foggy has taken another step back, and a crazy irrational part of Matt’s brain is keeping track, like knowing the number of steps that Foggy will take to move away from him will give him a clue as to how many he will need to climb to get him back.

“No,” Foggy says again, different, angry, “NO!” he spits out, disgusted.

Matt flinches with every ‘no’, and it’s nothing compared to what he said to himself. Oh but why does it hurt so bad when it comes from Foggy’s lips?

He reaches out to Foggy before he can think, needing him to stop, because he is losing count of the steps that he is taking, they are getting blurred with the furious beats of his heart. He is almost there, he can feel the heat ripple off Foggy’s shirt in the tips of his fingers before Foggy slaps his hand away.

“No. You are not doing this to her, Matt, you are not going to put this weight on her,” Foggy storms out of the room, his actions narrated by the unmistakable growl of a zip being forced open, soon forgotten amidst the thumping of belongings being shoved into the duffel bag.

“She is happy! Do you know how worried she’s been? How worried we’ve been? And you what, you were jealous?!”

Matt deserves every word, every detail of this pain, but he doesn’t know how to take it. It sinks deep under his skin, leaving wounds that hurt in places he didn’t know he had. His breathing stutters, comes in short uneven bursts. Matt thinks of Stick, of Elektra, of the soft heart they always loathed, of the love they never taught him how to smother.

“You almost killed a man, Matt! You TRIED TO KILL A MAN! And for what?? Jealousy?! Really?! That’s what Fisk does, Matt! Delivers his own brand of justice on stupid selfish whims!”

Foggy is going to go, he’s going to leave, and Matt needs to follow, he needs to stop him, he needs his friend. So he opens his jaw and then nothing comes out, but a croak and a whine and a sob he can’t contain. There’s no lies he can say, there’s no freedom in the truth, so his lips work in silent begging, almost pray to a God that wants him to feel the wrath he deserves.

“We would’ve done anything for you. Do you even know what you’ve put us through? Again?! Do you ever think of anyone outside of yourself?!”

“F-foggy,” he eventually rasps out, because he is standing and his legs are moving but he can’t see, _he can’t see_ , his head is full of Foggy’s disappointment, heavy and churning and gradually solidifying his limbs, like cement. He trips over something, lands on all fours, air whooshing out of his lungs.

_Don’t leave, please don’t leave me,_ he begs silently, feeling transparent like that tear that is cutting down his face.

Foggy pauses with his hand on the door, takes-in the scene before him, and Matt wishes he could just say it, just one time, tell him all that he means to Matt, that Foggy is all that Matt has. Or even explain how he’s sorry, how he’s lost, how he won’t be the same man as before. He can do better, he wants to be better, but he won’t be anything if Foggy goes.

Instead he stays on the floor, unable to catch his breath between pathetic whimpers, lost between up and down and remorse and shame and pride and disgust and all the words that he never learned how to say.

Foggy doesn’t even take that half-breath before he says: “You were right Matt. I don’t know you at all.”

And even as the door slams shut, Matt knows that Foggy won’t be coming back.

*

“This one?”

Claire presses down _hard_ with the tip of the pen. Matt winces slightly. She gives a satisfied nod and ticks another bone off the list.

“How about…this one?”

Matt shakes his head. Claire stopped being gentle after the first two bones when Matt lied and said that they were fine. Apparently the blooming bruise and swelling gave him away. Claire pressed a thumb over the break until he agreed to help in a choked voice.

She has a printout of a human anatomy page on her lap. She told Matt she photocopied the page that details every bone in a hand, and there’s one with the muscles next to it. She’s leaving little ‘Xs’ where the bones are broken and tick marks where they are whole, her equivalent of an X-ray. She promised Matt that if he helped, she’d find a way to wrap him up so that he’d still be able to use his fingers. And so here they are, mapping injuries like star charts.

“He’ll come around, Matt,” Claire says reading his mind. Matt shakes his head, _not this time_ , he thinks.

Claire stumbled into Foggy storming down the stairs. Matt heard her ask ‘what? Foggy what happened?' But Foggy just kept walking. She found Matt on his knees on the floor and didn’t say a word. She just sat down next to him and started talking about her plan to fix his knuckles and then got to work, allowing Matt the space to find a way to stop hiccupping half-sobs and find his lungs again.

“People don’t react well to change,” she adds wisely, “he just needs a little time.”

Matt lowers his face, feeling too exposed without his glasses. Claire seems to know everything without him saying it. She reads bodies better than he does sometimes. Or maybe she caught the end of the screaming match. Foggy has always had vocal cords worthy of an opera singer.

“Ok, how about this one?” The tip of the pen sears like lightning as it pries the fracture open just a smidge. Matt nods through a grimace. The pressure disappears, leaving his knuckle throbbing dully.

“Might be time to start considering another armor…” Claire hints, while marking another scratchy X on the paper that smells so strongly of library. It reminds Matt of Columbia and...fuck. Foggy. He shakes the thoughts away.

“Don’t need one,” he grunts when she prods near the broken knuckle.

“Tell that to your knuckles,” she retorts.

“No Claire. I’m…done. Daredevil is…I’m done.”

She doesn’t say anything for a while, except for the occasional ‘this one?’. It’s quiet but for the scraping of pen on paper and the screeching in his hands when she presses extra hard. Matt’s hearing branches out so that he can melt in the soothing thudding of her heart, make it rebound in his head. He hides in the noise, doesn’t want to think or hear or feel anything else. It’s a while before he notices it, so tiny and fast; at first he thinks it’s an echo.

“Claire...!” He gasps in wonder, pulling his hand free from her grasp so that he can feel it, minuscule vibrations that flap against his index finger.

“So it’s really there, huh? Oh fuck,” Claire’s voice breaks, “I took a test but I just…Oh God, it’s really there?”

Matt presses gently against her womb. A tiny flutter nudges back.

“It’s so tiny, like a…” Matt hones in, tips his ear to focus, “like a pea. But it’s steady, it’s strong Claire. It’s there.”

Tears are flowing soundlessly down Claire’s face, filling the air with a bittersweet saltiness. Her hands move subtly down to cradle the baby she can’t quite believe is there.

“I haven’t told Luke,” she confesses in a shamed whisper, moving her hands to wipe roughly at the tears on her face. She misses a couple that pool at the fringe of her chin, waiting to be heavy enough to take the leap. Matt reaches out to catch them with his fingers before they can fall, then cups her face his palm.

“You are going to be the best mum,” he whispers earnestly, stroking her cheekbone once with his thumb before pulling her close to place a kiss on her shaky brow.

“After the practice I’ve had with you lot?” She gives a watery laugh, then takes a deep wobbly breath. Matt smiles, a full grin, the wonder and giddiness of this new discovery making him feel strangely high despite all the chaos within.

“Tell him Claire. Luke will be thrilled,” he reassures her, and Claire nods, stands up to reach for a tissue, wipes her face, then pulls him onto the couch and puts his hands on her lap. The gauze feels rough as sandpaper against his skin, but Matt barely notices it, drawn in by that tiny sound, stubborn and so sweet, of a new life growing.

She adds sponge and pliable metal splints, weaves some around his palm to keep the worse of his breaks steady, but makes sure that the pads of his fingers stay free. She adds strips of silk in the parts that will be laid directly against his skin. She never says anything, but Matt is touched by her attention to detail. He can’t even guess how long she must’ve spent planning this.

“Are you going to tell her?” She asks eventually, and for a minute Matt is lost.

“Tell who, what?”

“Karen,” Claire replies simply.

Matt’s stomach drops as an uncomfortable heat floods his face.

“How did you…”

“Love leaves a trace, Matt. Even when it’s bad.”

Matt doesn’t know what to say to that. He tries to joke, barely manages to push the words out against the heaviness that is constricting his chest: “You ever thought of becoming the next Oprah?”

“Ha! And leave you guys to play stupid roulette? Dream on, devil-boy!”

Matt tries to smile but his mouth doesn’t do it right. He turns away.

“If there is one thing that you know how to do, it is to love blindly. You throw yourself in with no hope of getting yourself out and you don’t give it a second thought. Sure, I used to think you reserved that kind of fervor for cities, but it looks like some people made it through that stubborn armor of yours too. It may not always pan out right, but any girl would be lucky to be loved by Matt Murdock.”

“She’s got someone else,” he admits, “she’s happy. I…”

“You need to let her go,” she finishes for him, and Matt nods, even while he wonders how, how?

“Tell her Matt. You are not the first person to let love get out of hand. I’m not saying that what you did was right, even if it looked like justice at the start. But you can’t keep doing this to yourself. To Foggy. To Karen. Hell, to me too.”

Matt shifts and Claire stills him by placing a hand on his chest. She takes one of his hands in hers and squeezes lightly.

“I know,” Matt says, “I…I know.”

“Tell her and let her go. She needs to be able to do this, if there is ever a chance of her finding her way back to you. And even if not, you know this Matt. I know you love her enough to want her to be happy. So do it for her, if you can’t do it for yourself.”

Anything, he’d do anything for her. Bleed, fight, die. They’re asking for the one thing he doesn’t know how to give. They’re asking him to let her go.

His fingers clench against Claire’s skin.

_Please_ , he wants to beg. _Please don’t make me do this_.

Claire sighs and pulls his head down to rest on her lap. She kicks off her boots and sinks deeper into the couch cushions. She keeps hold of one of Matt’s hands, fierce, warm and soft all at once, and uses the other to comb his locks from his forehead. Matt adjusts his head carefully so that his ear can rest directly underneath her stomach. His eyelids fall shut as he listens to the flutter of hope and wonders if his life will ever sound like that again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m so sorry for the delay in getting this to you. I had the weirdest week with appendicitis scares and Matt Murdock-style migraines (I now understand how he can ‘hear neon’) and then I just wasn’t feeling it, you know? Nelson vs Murdock fights are always the WORST. I even opened the file on Friday to write the scene and ended up writing 1000 words of Matt/Foggy smut instead. I was rejecting this scene with every fiber of my being.
> 
> I absolutely added Claire as an afterthought, purely because I needed someone to give my poor murdery Matt a hug. So I guess at least you get a longer chapter to reward you for the wait? A little more bittersweet than just bitter? Before you kill me though, I'm going admit I didn't watch season 2 of Luke Cage so I have no idea if the two of them stay together. They do in this universe, that's for sure!
> 
> Finally, and most importantly, thank you so much to Story Unfolding for the brilliant song suggestion! And thank you to all of you readers, who continue to fill my days with the most wonderful comments and musings and feedback and kudos or just views. I'm too grateful for words!


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Again, been too long: Foggy has left, having found out that Matt has almost killed a man because he has feelings for Karen. Matt is nursing his wounds with Claire for company, who is also incidentally pregnant with Luke's baby.

_What am I now? What am I now?_

_What if I'm someone I don't want around?_

_I'm falling again, I'm falling again, I'm falling_

_What if I'm down?_

_What if I'm out?_

_What if I'm someone you won't talk about?_

_I'm falling again, I'm falling again, I'm falling_

_~_ **_Falling_** _by **Harry Styles**_

Matt lies sprawled on the bed, pillows scattered like a fort around him, blankets only there for show, having recently discarded his latest attempt at meditation. He tried, he really did, when Claire suggested it might help clear the heaviness from his mind.

She’s sat in the living room, idly flicking through a hand-me-down copy of ‘what to expect when you are expecting’ that she picked up from a charity shop on her last outing (and that smells strongly of artificial vanilla and cake batter, of all things), occasionally scoffing at an over-simplified bit of medical information.

Matt tries again from this position, breathes in deep, his mattress releasing hints of his past in the colors of a rainbow, dust mites, and silk strands amongst other, more obscure scents, rain and sweat, blood, gun powder and three, no, four different laundry detergents. He lets his hands hang loose, one dangling by the side of the bed, and lasts precisely two of Claire’s heartbeats and four baby-beats before his thoughts inevitably trickle back into his artificial blankness.

Sometimes it’s a single sob, alone and echoing in his memory, rippling circular waves until it fills him up. Other times, it’s just _her_. He thinks her name, says it slow, like a meaningful verse of poetry, then chastises himself for wanting to do it again. He shouldn’t. He shouldn’t. The worst attempt ends when he pictures Foggy’s smile at the news that Claire is pregnant, how it would erupt so bright that Matt would feel it, in his sunny tone and in that particular shade of heat that Matt always associates with happiness, with Foggy. The thought makes Matt’s lips twitch and almost reach for the phone. He never makes the call that would go unanswered. He throws himself flat on his stomach instead, hoping sleep will come to take him away.

He’s still there when three sharp raps rattle his door and isn’t fast enough, his senses still slurry, imprecise, to warn Claire before she opens the door.

“No, thank you,” she says before Maggie has finished taking a full breath, moving to close the door again.

“And what exactly do you think I am selling, I wonder?”

“We are Jewish,” Claire lies smoothly, her pulse barely wavering. Matt marvels at how much she has improved since the day they’d first met. Her heart had been rattling like a snake’s tail, perfectly hidden behind her smooth composure. Just not to Matt.

“And we are all God’s children, but this is not why I’m here. I was told Matthew lives here.”

“You know Matt?”

Claire’s pulse jumps, the baby’s triples in response. Maggie’s remains a monotone, a grandfather’s clock, ticking away slow and steady.

“In a sense. Is he here?”

“I didn’t know the church made house-calls,” venom bleeds into Claire’s tone, cautious, suspicious.

“We don’t usually. But when Daredevil gets nicknamed ‘the butcher’…”

“Oh,” Matt hears Claire’s hair sweep her shoulder when she looks in the direction of the bedroom, “you know about…that?”

“He came to us after Midland Circle collapsed. We did what we could at the time. So, have I passed inspection? May I come in?”

“Ummm…I’m not sure. I’m going to have to check that with him,” Claire moves back. The door squeaks when she pushes it a little more towards closed.

“By all means. But please don’t expect him to be overjoyed when you tell him his mother is here.”

_Shit_ , Matt thinks, burying his face into the mattress.

“You’re…you’re his…” Claire let’s go of the door completely, “but you’re a…”

“A nun? Yes.”

“Well, damn.”

“Language, please.”

“Right! Well I guess come in then…ummm…Matt’s mom,” Claire steps back as the door swings open, unleashing a faint breeze that swishes thought Matt’s hair.

“You can call me Maggie.”

“Ok…”

“And you are…?”

Panicking, Claire is panicking. Matt hears her knees crack as she bends swiftly, then hops on the spot a couple of times.

“Leaving. Right now. Give you two some time to…wow.”

And then she’s gone, taking Matt’s borrowed sense of calm right along with her.

*

Matt knows he only has seconds before his mother reaches him. It’s not enough time to fix anything, but wishes and regrets always find a space to squeeze in anyways. He might’ve tidied up. At least his hair. She didn’t have to find him like this. Again.

Ah fuck.

He’s still wearing his blood-encrusted top. His cowl is on the floor from when he threw it off during his panic attack, the ropes somewhere in the living room. They emanate a faint whiff of rotting carcass every so often. Or maybe that’s him.

He can tell that Maggie is not impressed by the way she is standing at the foot of his bed, surveying him just as she did when she made him stand in the corner to repent, a naughty child.

“How did you find me?” He asks, bristling under her scrutiny.

He never gave her his address after all. Their stop-and-start reconciliation had always ended where it began – in the church, more often than not accompanied by a fresh latte and a trace of Father Lantom’s absence, thicker than that froth that Sister Maggie now prided herself on.

“Well hello to you too, Matthew.”

“You came here for formalities?”

“Good manners have never hurt anyone.”

“Evading questions part of your good manners?” Matt curls on his side, placing his hands neatly under the pillow nearest him.

“So it’s going to be like this then.”

“Like what, exactly?”

Matt scrapes lightly at the pillow cover with his nails. Maggie hasn’t moved from the foot of the bed.

“Wallowing in self-pity. Struck down in your prime. Betrayed by God. Angry, sarcastic, proud. Would you like to tell me how Job is a pussy again, or can we actually move on to discuss what the real problem is?”

“You could tell me how you found me,” Matt doesn’t try to sit up, doesn’t want to, really. What would be the point?

“Your girl, Karen, gave me your address. She hoped you’d be more willing to listen to sense if it came from a…different source.”

“Ha ha. Funny.” Matt rebukes, mouth dry. “And she’s not my girl,” he adds, trying not to contemplate exactly what they must’ve said to each other.

“And whose fault is that?”

Maggie’s whit is sharp as a whip and stings just as bad. Matt scowls, “it’s complicated.”

“No. Love is not complicated. Love is the purest simplest thing there is. We mix it up with other emotions – envy, greed, pride, lust. But those aren’t love.”

“I never said this was love either,” he mutters through gritted teeth.

“Ahhh, always the lawyer,” his mother continues, unperturbed, “God forbid you actually faced your feelings for once, Matthew.”

“I’m not,” Matt fights the urge to get sucked into this argument, “can we talk about something else?”

“You never introduced me to your house-guest.”

“She’s just a friend,” he says as he grinds his forehead against the mattress.

“She’s pretty.”

“Ah. I wouldn’t know,” _Foggy would have something to say about that_ , he thinks. Even that hurts.

“Of course.”

“Anything else?” He is being rude, he knows that, but he doesn’t know how not to be, his patience thinned by exhaustion and the prospect of being lectured currently beyond unbearable.

“I haven’t seen you in church lately.”

“I’ve been busy,” Matt lies, defensive again.

“So I’ve read.”

“Is that why you are here?”

“Would it be unreasonable if I was?”

_No_ , he thinks. Only Matt still hasn’t learned what it means not to be an orphan, how a blood tie can really mean for better or for worse. People leave, that’s what they do. Matt’s used to it. He’s learned how to say that goodbye, how to provoke it, predict it even. Nobody’s taught him how to deal with the people that choose to stay. He’s still not sure he’d like to stay himself, really.

“You don’t need to worry about me, I’m fine.”

“I’m not sure I agree with that.”

“Well, it’s not your problem anymore,” Matt startles himself with his audacity, the fear of reprimand by sister Maggie somehow ingrained deeper than he would’ve thought. He keeps his chin up nonetheless, feeling a slight blush heat his face.

“I may have lost the right to parent you a long time ago, but even I can recognize a cry for help when I see one.”

“This is not…I’m fine, ok?”

_Just go, just go_ , he thinks. If she goes now, before…maybe it won’t hurt so bad.

“So you keep saying, and yet here you are, in bed, mid-afternoon, covered in filth and wasting all of the gifts that God has given you. Your girl said you haven’t been at the office in weeks –“

“SHE’S NOT MY-“

“-Your own firm, your friends, your health. Are they really worth so little to you?”

“They’re not…I’m not…I’m just taking a…a…a…break.”

“From what exactly?”

“From everything.”

_From myself._

“Hiding from your mistakes won’t right them.”

“Ha. _You_ would know, mu-“ the word ‘mum’ gets stuck on its way out, like it grew in size from when it was just a thought. Matt clears his throat to try and dislodge it, smacking his lips shut when he can’t. He’s gone too far, wretched guilt sharp as thorns tells him so, the elephant, finally addressed, is now too big to fit in the room. Maggie falls silent, her fingers plucking strings from thin air from where they hide near her lap.

“I won’t say I don’t deserve this,” she says eventually, “but there are worse things that you could call me.”

He knows the pain behind her casual reprimand, the quiet hope to restore something that they both thought was lost. But there is still a part of him that is raging at the mother that was right there the whole time, the one that could’ve saved him, and chose not to.

He didn’t have to be alone. It didn’t have to be like this.

Matt nods, and even that hurts, a lump in his throat, two parts of him struggling to merge and mixing like oil in water.

“I see so much of Jack in you, Matthew. The pride, the stubbornness, your strength,” Maggie sits on the side of his bed, the small dip in the mattress drawing Matt in, despite his best efforts, “It scares me when I see parts of myself too. Parts of myself that perhaps,” she stops mid-breath, mid-thought, turns towards Matt then back again, “Lord only knows how my choices have affected you, when you were that little…” she’s talking to herself, muttering under her breath, and her hand has strayed to his shoulder now, and become his new center of gravity.

Matt’s throat is tight, and there’s a large, more uncomfortable gnawing near his guts that is telling him all about misplaced anger, of deeper, more repressed issues that have nothing to do with his latest screw-up. Because maybe it all started then, with a fucked-up start, he had nowhere to go but deeper down, until he forgot what the light even looked like.

Maggie’s hand moves to his face, to push his hair back from his forehead, almost clinically, the gesture forbidden by her guilt, coating her touch in a layer of frost. She then moves to adjust that cross that he couldn’t bring himself to remove from his chest, just as she would his tie. Her fingers rest there, on the body-warmed metal and Matt tries so damn hard not to want them to stay there.

_Let them go_ , Sticks warns in his head, _let them all go_ , when Maggie’s hand inevitably leaves his chest.

Maggie sighs, an invisible sound that’s all for Matt, air thinning as silence stretches. Matt’s fingers twitch, mostly stilled by the cast, half-formed thoughts of reaching out to find the missing piece of himself. They never make it, like the words to his lips, the _I’m sorry for being broken_ , the _I’m sorry for not being enough_.

“You know, before you were born,” Maggie starts, her back turned, her hands clasped on her lap, “we didn’t have much, me and Jack. But we were young and in love and that made up for most of it.”

She takes a breath and her voice grows stronger. Matt’s immobile, suddenly afraid to spook the moment, desperately curious.

“Things changed when we found out you were on the way. We were ecstatic of course; Jack couldn’t wait to be a dad. But money was tight, and we could barely afford the little flat we had. I had no useful skills, so Jack started taking up more fights than he could handle. I’d go watch him sometimes, I still found it so exciting, he turned into a completely different man. A little like you, when you…”

Maggie sounds almost fond and Matt’s…Matt’s lost in the feeling of becoming his hero and his worst nightmare, all at once. 

“This one time, I was about four months in, and your dad had hit the floor one too many times. The odds were stacked against him: this was a more experienced fighter. If Jack had won, we would’ve made enough to feed us for a month, with a little to spare. I remember walking to the side of the ring, the smell of sweat and leather and how his left eye was swollen shut. I could see that he was struggling, wanting to keep fighting while his body was shutting down.”

Matt’s there, at Fogwell’s, hearing the roar of the crowd, the air thick with smoke and the taste of blood, like a stain in the back of his throat. He can hear his father’s grunts as he moves, the little puffs of air he hisses out through his teeth as his gloves hit flesh. The ground trembles faintly with each of his steps.

“He was sat on that little worn stool that always made him look like a giant in a doll’s house, running water through his hair. When he turned to look at me, I knew he was searching for strength. So I pulled his hand towards me, right in between the ropes, and I don’t know what made me do it, I…I placed it on my womb. On…on you. And I stood there, trying to decide whether I should tell him to just forfeit the fight, take him home and fix his face. Maybe I could take a few shifts at the local down the street? But then,” Maggie laughs softly, “you started kicking, right against his hand. You’d never kicked before, see…Jack took one look at me and said: “This one’s a Murdock, alright,” and laughed. There was blood on his teeth, it was actually quite frightening, but also so perfect, it…It felt like a miracle, how you made his whole face light up. I don’t know what I expected when I asked him: ‘And what do Murdock’s do?” Jack, he…he rubbed his glove right against your tiny feet,” Maggie mimes the movement against her lower belly, “and he bent down so that he could croon it like a lullaby: ‘They get back up.’”

Maggie is silent for a spell, room humid with salt and tears. Matt can’t tell if they are his or hers.

“Jack won that fight and used the money to buy you a crib. It took a week for his face to swell back down, and I had to give him 11 stitches, all across his face.” Maggie says eventually, almost wistful, “It was the first time I heard him say that…but not the last,” she stands to face him again, “and if there is one thing that’s for sure, Matthew, is that you are a Murdock. You’ll find a way to get back up.”

Matt doesn’t have a witty retort, doesn’t have a defense, only disappointment and mistakes and regrets and now these fresh memories, hopeful and hollow, of a life that was, of everything it never became.

“I…I don’t know how,” he admits, his voice hoarse.

“Neither do babies, but somehow they figure it out. You just need to find that one thought that gives you strength when you think all is lost. You father found that in you.”

“What was yours? Your t-thought when you were…” Matt asks quickly, before he can lose his nerve, before he can accept that there is only one answer that he wants to hear, and yet, none of them would help anything.

Maggie’s heart tips off balance, always so steady, always so unfazed, Matt hears it change as she lifts her arm to rest her slender fingers on the right side of his jaw. Her skin is chapped and dry, coarse from overuse, and it smells like St Agnes, cheap laundry detergent, candle wax, incense and yellowing paper. She doesn’t move her hand, just keeps it there, with her thumb the corner of his mouth and her touch bouncing slightly with her pulse.

Matt doesn’t move, can’t move, choked by the fire blazing in his chest.

“I’ll be looking for you in church this Sunday,” she says quietly, her usual steady tone wavering when as always, much too soon, her hand retreats and she walks backwards through the door, leaving Matt with a longing he doesn’t want to acknowledge, leaden and solid.

“I’ll try,” he promises, listening to her head to the door.

She’s gone, three floors down according to the sound of her shoes, when Matt whispers it once, just to himself, just to practice: “Mom.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First of all, I'm so sorry guys. I know it's been a couple of weeks, but damn, writing Maggie is HARD. I've never tried her before, and I'm not sure if it's just writing her or if I'm in a weird funk, but I've rewritten this chapter way too many times because it was just never good enough. I hope I've done her justice, finally, but I apologize if I haven't.
> 
> It occurred to me that Maggie would have to make an appearance at least. There's no way that she would sit idle while she read about her son ravaging the city on the news and then promptly disappeared from existence. She's probably one of the few who Matt can really relate to right now, despite his anger and hurt: Maggie has piled up almost, if not more, mistakes than Matt. I'm also always wondering whether post-partum depression affects the baby as well. Is Matt more prone to depression because he was abandoned as a baby? He's had such a fucked up life, any bit of it could be the cause. But who knows.
> 
> Finally, can I just thank you all for your comments. I love how this story is sparking such wonderful debates on Matt's personality. I'm head over heels with your interpretation of the characters and of the story. I'm completely overwhelmed by the love you have shown me so far. I would've thrown the whole laptop in the bin if it wasn't for your support, and a few chapters ago too. If you are one of the my quieter readers, maybe not in the right headspace to comment right now, or just not that type of reader, I'm grateful to you too. I love you all, and I hope that you enjoyed this little flashback.
> 
> Last, but not least, thanks to dre_deckerstvr or daredevilstar on tumblr for the song suggestion. I hope I used it right :)
> 
> Stay safe, and most of all, chin-up, keep smiling.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I never thought I'd have to give spoiler warnings when summarizing what happened in previous chapters, but thanks to someone that shall not be named (*coughs* dre_deckerstvr *coughs*), who reads chapters randomly, I'm now worried to give up too much. So I'll just say in the previous chapter, Matt and Maggie had a talk. Sorry if you have to read back to remember what it was about!

_When you hurt under the surface_

  
_Like troubled water running cold_

  
_Well, time can heal but this won't_

_~_ **_Before you go_** _by **Lewis Capaldi**_

“Get up.”

That voice is so familiar, blinding in its beauty, like that sunset you can only glimpse at for fear of burning your retinas to a crisp. Forbidden, or so Matt thought, for the better part of the last few hours. Days. Weeks? Only God knows how long it has been.

It feels like moments ago when Claire left to find her way home, to look after herself for once. Matt promised her that the worst of it was over, that he wouldn’t destroy the bandages she took so much care in weaving around his mangled hands.

He still manages a fake cheer when she calls to check on him. Or maybe not a cheer; a spark of life. He removes a little of the dead weight from his vocal cords, wears the mask just for a few minutes. Every time she hangs up, Matt lets the weight pin him down and he waits. For life, for death, for a change. He doesn’t know.

“I said get up, Murdock.”

There it is again. So deliciously tempting. Crystal clear water that murmurs in gentle waves, sunlight beams kissing softly at its surface. Treacherous like that current that is waiting to steal you away.

Matt has made a promise to himself, to Claire, to Foggy too; in his mind at least. To let it go. Let _her_ go. Cut off the rotting piece of the apple, try to put up with the bruising. Find a way to feel whole again. He promised, he did. He snuck it in a prayer too, hoping God would listen this time. Maybe help him loosen the chokehold enough for air to lick down past his neck.

“Matt,” the voice says, annoyed now.

It’s funny, because Matt usually dreams of her in lighter tones. The smell is wrong too, now that he is paying attention: when he allows himself to cheat, just for a second, to feel her again, in his mind, before the world shuts off in a steel cage of agony, she usually just smells like her. Like rain in a summer storm, but sweeter, a little floral, roses or jasmine maybe, and just enough like Josie’s grime to make her feel that much purer. Now she’s _him_ , Thomas, wears his kisses on her skin, the traces of his breath and the oils from his hands.

What a strange dream.

Her touch is unexpected, but not unpleasant. He’s never allowed himself to go this far in his longing, to touch, knowing that he would probably be unable to recover. It’s soft, warm, with a faint chill around her fingertips. She grips his bicep steadily, shakes him slightly, and then let’s go, leaving Matt to feel the echoes pulse through every part of his body.

“Matt,” she says, closer, wafts of artificial mint from her toothpaste inching their way through his nostrils, strangely refreshing, they bring him a step closer to consciousness, like a rush of cold air. Her fingers explore near his wrist, tiny curious icicles that hurt and soothe all at once, then retreat an inch away from his face.

Will the dream shatter in tinkling shards of glass if Matt opens his eyes? His eyelashes flutter when he tries, but Karen’s presence stays there, as real as…wait.

“Matt, we don’t have time for this,” she whines as she crouches by the bed, the joints in her right knee creaking. His covers disappear, torn out of his grasp in a swift move. They whoosh through the air before they land in a heap by his feet.

_Thud_ , _thud_ , _thud_ , Karen’s very real heartbeat waits impatiently for Matt to make a move.

“Come on, Matt. Up!”

“Karen?” He mumbles stupidly because he is 55% sure that this is not a dream, but still, almost entirely sure that it is.

“Yes, Matt, but now I really need you to get up.”

A million questions crash into each other on the way to his mouth, most consisting of the word ‘what’ repeated to infinity.

“How?” Matt swallows hard, “how did you get in here?!”

The roof? The door? He didn’t hear the lock…her heartbeat. Her smell. Shit, shit, shit.

“You still keep your spare key on the underside of your third drawer in the office,” she announces smugly, “now get up. Mass starts in an hour and you promised your mom that you would make it this Sunday.”

The flurry of information saturates his synapses, making them blink out disjointed signals that Matt can’t process. He gapes while he waits for one of his too many questions to win priority status on his tongue, then considers spluttering in indignation and horror and shame at the thought of Karen seeing him like this.

“You…you…my mother?!” He eventually chokes out.

“Well she’s been worried, said she came by and that you were your usual charming self,” Karen pauses to _tsk_ in disapproval, “anyways, she told me you had plans to go to church today, and I came by to make sure you wouldn’t disappoint.”

Somehow Karen’s answers only unleash another tsunami of questions that would knock Matt flat out if he wasn’t already on his back. Karen seems unperturbed, now that Matt has responded in a semi-human way, and moves confidently to his closet.

“Hm, I think you should wear a shirt. It is Sunday. And maybe…do you have jeans? Ah there…”

She places what he assumes is a clean shirt on the side of his bed, folds a pair of jeans neatly next to it. Matt is engulfed by a cloud of cotton and denim and laundry detergent, but is too mortified to move when he hears her head towards his drawers, opening them and shutting them swiftly until she reaches…his boxers. Karen quietens as her face suddenly glows with heat.

“Ok,” she declares, satisfied, once his outfit has been laid out for him.

Matt. Wants. To. Die.

Instead he gapes in the general direction of the fabric that is pressing a light imprint on his mattress, wanting to reach out with his fingers and test her skin, mutter ‘Karen’ over and over until he is sure that all this isn’t just…the weirdest dream.

“Uhh, I don’t mean to sound insensitive, but you should…maybe…shower?”

Her face changes, does something so that the heat signature bunches up, white and dull gold and orange, and just the worry that she is scrunching up her nose is enough to make Matt blush to the roots of his hair.

“Karen, what are you doing here?” He asks, searching blindly for the bed covers so that he can, hopefully, disappear. But she predicts his moves and pulls the silk sheet clean off the bed.

“Foggy said that you needed to talk to me,” she admits, her pulse changing into something skitter, anxious. Curious?

“F-foggy…Foggy…” even saying his name is harsh, grit rubbing against open wounds, “what. What did he say?”

“Oh, you know Foggy when he is all pissed off. Sticks his head up his ass and goes on his solo drinking sprees and speaks in Morse code. Not sure what the hell happened this time, you two are worse than an old married couple, honestly. But we don’t have time for this, we need to be out of here in,” her arm moves, ticks feebly, “forty-nine minutes.”

Her foot starts to tap insistently on the floor, a little too fast to keep time with her watch, a little too slow to align with her pulse. Matt just tries to focus on breathing through the dread, just like he would to brace himself against the sharp flare of an injury. He tries to predict what Foggy might have said, then drowns at the thought of what Matt will need to say.

“I…” Matt starts, knowing he has nowhere to go from there.

Karen softens through a small sigh and steps forward again.

“Matt, I’m not going to let you bail on your mother. She’ll think you have the worst friends in the world,” she takes another step, brushes her hand against his clean shirt, impregnating that spot with every bit of her, “and I’m not sure what Foggy is right now, but I’m still here. So: let’s get you cleaned up and presentable for your mother, and then we can talk about all this. Ok?”

Matt nods, cowardly and grateful to have a few more hours to practice his ‘Karen, I’m a freak’ speech. He gets up with stiff limbs, uncomfortable in his own skin, muscles limp from lack of use, sides sore from lying down so much. Karen doesn’t say anything as he scoops up the clean clothes and makes his way to the bathroom, her nervous pulse following him all the way.

He then waits, door closed and leaning against the cold tiles of his bathroom walls, for her to get up the courage to do whatever it is that she is skirting around. He doesn’t have to wait long. Matt has just finished counting to thirty when Karen knocks hesitantly at the door. She swings the door open and wordlessly places something that clacks like plastic and has the sour tang of metal on the basin – a razor. Another hint. Matt wonders what he looks like in this state, self-conscious probably for the first time in weeks.

Something then crackles in her hands as she dithers.

“Uh…for your hands,” she pushes the thin plastic against the pads of his fingertips, “I think you shouldn’t get the cast wet.”

Matt nods and holds his hands out. Karen immediately opens the bags and ties them tightly around his wrists. The layer of plastic is uncomfortable, a veil shielding him from the sensations of the world, but Matt would rather endure than take Claire’s wrath.

He mutters a hoarse ‘thanks’, already finding the edge of his top, then hesitates when Karen doesn’t immediately leave the room.

“Oh, uh, sorry, I…Do you need help? Your hands…the shower knobs and lids and stuff…I could…”

Matt’s not sure who is blushing harder, and it’s not like Karen hasn’t seen most of him at one point or another, but jeez just the thought right now. Not like this. God.

“I’ll be fine Karen, thanks,” he mumbles as confidently as he can.

He does manage, more or less, once she finally leaves the room. Wet plastic slithers and he can’t close his hands into fists, so he drops each of the shampoo and soaps a few times. He uses his mouth to open lids and has to use two hands clasped together to keep the razor steady enough, but is almost proud to end up with more cuts than stubble.

He bites the plastic off his palms with his teeth once he is dry, and even manages to wriggle his jeans shut, but the buttons of his shirt slither out of his open hands, the little slits in the cloth impossible for him to find one handed. He gets more and more clumsy as he tries to rush, knowing Karen is waiting outside. He ends up storming out of the bathroom, shirt hanging open and bare-chested, intending to swap his top out with something easier and preferably button-less and walks smack into Karen, who seems to be carrying his whole bedding in her arms.

“Oh,” she huffs when Matt collides with her, then says ‘ah’ when she lowers the bundle of linens.

“Karen, shit, sorry, I,” he squeaks, then tries to lower his tone to something more…manly, “please,” he pulls his sheets out of her grasp and heads to dump them into his laundry basket to be dealt with later. He almost runs back to the bedroom to make sure that Karen doesn’t make his bed up for him too. Predictably, she is sorting through his cupboard when he reaches her, probably wanting to do just that.

“Karen, please, I can make my own bed,” he tells her from the door, afraid to take one more step, an intruder in his own home.

“Like you can do up that shirt?” Her voice echoes in each corner of his wardrobe.

“It’s different,” Matt walks to the opposite side to feel for a different top, holding his shirt closed with one hand.

“No, don’t change,” she seems to have finally straightened up, “that color looks nice on you.”

“…what?” Matt splutters. Did she…Did she…

“Here, allow me,” she says, still glowing faintly from her brashness, she pulls him by his collar and trails her fingers down, hooking each button into its slot delicately. She’s done in less than ten seconds flat, ten seconds of Matt’s heart roaring so loudly that he worries she must be able to feel it, to hear it, even without super-senses.

“Thanks,” Matt exhales for the first time while pushing out the word, his voice husky, the collar of the shirt itchy, tight. He moves to pull at it the second she let’s go of him, walking casually out of the bedroom.

“Alright, all set? Let’s go. I’ll drive you,” she calls from the other room, keys jingling against the pepper spray, making subtle hints of acrid fire stick to the corners of his eyes.

Matt takes two hesitant steps and then stops. His legs freeze, his muggy mind can’t sort through the sudden overload of dread and action and consequences. He sinks to the floor and for a moment he thinks he might be fainting, but the darkness remains solid, refusing to let him sink into oblivion. His legs hit the ground hard, and the pain splinters up his shins and knees. Matt’s kneeling and when it’s not enough, he finds himself on all fours soon after, lungs working air like it’s become rubbery, sticky.

“Matt?” Karen rushes through the room to catch him, but his heart yammering in his chest covers up most of her flustering steps. She crouches low by his head and grips his bicep like she is planning to hold him up. Matt can smell her panicked pulse as it leaks adrenaline into the flow.

“Not today,” Matt whispers hoarsely, “maybe…maybe I can go next week...?”

Matt fiddles with the gauze around his palm. The plastic bags kept most of the water out, but a few drops leaked and dampened the fabric. It is now a few degrees colder than the rest of his hands, making his nerves flare like neon.

“Oh Matt…” she murmurs. Her arms close tight around his shoulders and Matt moves one hand to pull her closer, clinging to the stiff fabric of her dress. Her warmth is hypnotic, addictive. Matt suffocates in her smell.

“It’s going to be ok,” she croons by his ear, her breaths tickling the side of his jaw. Matt shivers and lets go of the girl that is not his to drown into. He squares his shoulders and gently prizes himself out of her embrace, inundated by a sudden wave of claustrophobia. She doesn’t resist, her fingers trailing on the nape of his neck and by his jaw on their way back onto her lap.

“Talk to me Matt.”

A small razor nick by his lips pops open, eeking out a shimmering droplet of blood. Matt’s sinuses fill with the sour smell copper as the bead swells. Karen moves to reach it before it falls and Matt instinctively catches her hand, wanting to move it back to her lap, to keep her separate from all that he is, because he is not sure he’ll be able to bear it, to have her this close, to not be allowed to have her closer.

“Karen, I need to tell you something,” he meant to let go of her hand, place is down and sit back on his haunches. Instead he squeezes it like it can say everything he can’t, like if he squeezes it tight enough she’ll be the one to let go. All the words evaporate from his lips when she pushes her fingers through his.

“Ok,” she says simply. Calmly. Safely. Because they can walk together and find the eye of the storm. Because she thinks they have survived worst. Maybe they have. Just not this. And now that he is here, this close to her, he can’t bring himself to say the words that will give her up.

“It’s ok, Matt, I understand.”

_No, you don’t_ , thinks Matt.

His face must have betrayed him because she continues, “I do, Matt. You can say it.”

“Say what?”

“That you wanted to kill someone. I…I know what it feels like to want someone to die,” she takes a shuddering breath, “I wanted Wesley to die.”

“It’s not the same, Karen.”

“No, it’s not. Because you got a second chance, Matt,” Karen’s the one squeezing too hard now. Matt feels the pressure of her fear in each fissure of his broken knuckles.

“There was that moment, right after. It’s as if I woke up from a trance, and I found myself holding this smoking gun and he was…” Matt squeezes back, the brace squeaks in protest, “you know, the worst part was the relief. That one second of relief that he was dead.”

“You were scared for your life. You did the only thing you could.”

“But what does it say about me, Matt? I saved my own life, but at what price?”

Rage, at himself for not having been there, at Fisk for putting her in this position, at God, for channeling all his wrath into the same lamb.

“I’m glad you killed him,” he spits out, surprised when he means it.

“Yeah, I guess sometimes I am too. It’s just that other times I wonder…how things could’ve gone. If I just shot him once, ran away…maybe…”

“I should’ve been there.”

_It should’ve been me_ , he thinks.

“You can’t be everywhere, all the time,” and her heart means it.

“But for you…” His heart means it too.

Karen presses a small smile, like she would a kiss, into his cheek.

“I have to go,” she says, standing up and patting his hair in place, “I’ll be back tomorrow. How does Thai sound?”

Matt grins from the floor, “perfect. Thai sounds perfect.”

“Great, it’s a date then, Mr Murdock,” her pulse flutters, “Oh, I mean…”

“It’s ok Karen, I know.”

She bobs her head in a nod, loosening a few strands of hair that caress her cheek as they fall. Her bag leaves a fleeting fiery trail when she picks it up.

“Hey Matt…” she stops on her way out of his room, “don’t waste it.”

“Waste what?”

“Your second chance. Make it count.”

Matt’s too late to respond. Karen breezes out of his house and steps into a waiting car. Matt busies himself with the swishing and rustling of setting new sheets on his bed to keep his ears quiet.

_It’s a date, Mr Murdock._

Even when it’s not, Matt can’t help the small smile that quirks his lips. But then his mind flashes back to their stinted conversation, filling him with dread for the words they left unsaid.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First of all, thanks to Story_Unfolding for the song suggestion!
> 
> I'm sorry it's been a while. I figured the only way out of writer’s block is through it, so here I am. Who knows, maybe I’ll find the magic in between the lines?! 
> 
> If you are still here, you are too good to me and I don't deserve any of you. I will try to do you justice and decrease the long gaps in between chapters.
> 
> Happy new year beautiful readers. I hope it brings you all the joy you couldn't have in 2020.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Karen and Matt schedule a 'fake date'.

_I had my chances_

_But I set you free_

_And now I wonder_

_Why I couldn't see_

_You look so good in love_

_You want him_

_That's easy to see_

_You look so good in love_

_I wish you still wanted me_

_~_ **_You look so good in love_** _by **George Strait**_

Matt feels like a teenager, practicing his dance moves before taking the prettiest girl to prom. He wishes he had a friendly ear to confide in, some grown-up advice to settle his nerves. He even picks up the phone, considers his contacts, the various levels of disheveled that he left each relationship in. If only Claire would call with her usual check-up. Talk to him for a couple of minutes about absolutely nothing, so that he could slide into another life, just for a moment. Wouldn’t it be nice if he could be somebody else, even for one night?

He slams the phone back down on the coffee table. No. Pretending to be someone else wouldn’t help him this time. Just another mask, a fake happy ending. The joy would never sink in deep enough, leaving all the ugly to fester and a devil ready to spring free. Matt’s head cocks to his left, testing the weightlessness of the air trapped inside the chest. The fabric is starting to taste stale from lack of use, an extra fleck of rust sour in the second coil of the padlock.

_Would it feel better…?_

His phone comes to life, the vibrations jarringly loud as they reverberate in the wooden table.

_Foggy, Foggy, Foggy, Foggy._

Hope drenches his every fiber and he snatches the phone off the table, fumbling with the controls in his useless hands: “Foggy?”

He smacks his phone to his ear so fast that he probably leaves a bruise, but he doesn’t care, he barely waits for a response, rushes through his next words: “Foggy I’m so -

“- Stop. I don’t want to hear it, ok?” The deadness of Foggy’s tone replaces anything alive that had surged through him. Matt slumps into the couch.

“Why did you call?” He asks tiredly.

“Karen’s asking questions.”

Like it’s his fault. And fuck, because of course it is.

“What did you tell her?”

“Nothing…yet,” relived yet cowardly, Matt almost wishes Foggy had told her everything, “Matt, I’m not going to keep lying to her for you. She deserves better.”

_So do you_ , Matt thinks. But something inside him won’t still, the devil looking to be heard.

“Is this a threat?” he growls, low.

“And what if it is, Daredevil? You going to try and kill me too?”

God, he’d love a fight. Sink his fists into flesh, think of nothing but the pounding of his heart and scouring the air for the most imminent threat. Become movement, and movement alone, the next move and then the one after. Not have to feel anything but the sharp white pain of a blow, a sensation contained, manageable. Not like this agony without a source, climbing steadily and saturating everything that he is, until he worries that he might burst like a defective pressure cooker.

But this is Foggy, and this is not the fight he really wants. This is probably the only fight he doesn’t want. Foggy. He used to be family.

“Do you really believe that?” He asks, and maybe he would be able to tell, if Foggy were here, by his side, listen to his heart, like the time it skirted around that question because he couldn’t really believe that Matt was the one who blew up those buildings. And just like that time, a lone tear escapes from his eyes, tracing a clean icy trail straight down his cheek. Because a little part of Foggy doubted, and Matt knew, in that instant, that maybe Foggy never knew him at all.

Foggy is quiet. Dead air crackles and fizzes, filling Matt’s chest with a cold that feels solid, permanent.

“Sort it out with Karen, Matt. I’m done playing your games.”

The line goes dead and Matt is left holding the phone to his cheek, the only remnant of a friendship that he used to think could be invincible.

*

“Hey Karen.”

He opens the door the second before she knocks. Her slender fist is now poised in mid-air, distractingly close to the bridge of his nose. Irrationally, he still wishes she would go ahead and knock.

“Hey Matt.”

His senses linger a little too long on the way her lips stop for a chaste kiss as she _mmms_ , relishing the slide of her tongue against her teeth to create the softest ‘t’ sound.

“I brought food?” she says when Matt doesn’t move.

“Right, of course, sorry. Come in.”

_Get a fucking grip man_. He moves casually down the hall, listening to her feet slide out of her low heels, at the blood flowing freely through the strained tendons in her ankles as his cold floor carves imprints into her soles. She leaves a trail of glowing footsteps behind her when she follows him.

“Wow,” she breathes, “this place looks…”

The flat is immaculate. Rare dust motes delicately circle the air, tiny snowflakes that disturb Matt’s senses in vengeance. Every inch has been swept, hoovered, dusted and scrubbed, all dirt disposed of in trash bags, right on top of the cowl, the torn ropes and his bloodied clothing. His bed is adorned with fresh crisp linens, drawn to an inch of their life. Matt was so scared to make a dent in them that he slept on the couch. The cushions are plumped, the dishes on the drying rack. He even laid out the table, forks, knives, napkins. Made sure more than a couple of beers are ready and chilled in the fridge.

He had a wine bottle, but he hid it in the cabinet with the cleaning products. Superstition and perfect nights, reminders of things that no longer belong.

_Out of sight, out of mind_ , he thought, then grinned at his bad joke.

“You didn’t have to clean for me, Matt,” she says eventually, placing the food on the counter.

“I didn’t,” he lies.

“And you look…better,” she ventures.

Matt adjusts the cuffs of the shirt he chose so carefully. It turns out that even the most sensitive senses are unable to distinguish colors without functioning eyes. He scrolled through the tags and hoped that the shade of blue was close enough to the one she would’ve picked. Not that it changed anything. Maybe he just hoped he’d be able to linger in a good memory when it was time to say goodbye. Couldn’t they have that, one last smile before the truth took her away? One last lie, one to stay?

“I’d pay you a nice compliment on the way you look too but –“

“-But you are blind?”

“Ouch, Miss Page. I was going to say: but this is not a date.”

Karen throws her hands up to cover her mouth and laughs guiltily. Matt wishes her fingers were elsewhere so that they wouldn’t filter the beauty of that sound.

“Maybe we should eat before you dig yourself into another hole?” He asks, handing her two plates.

“Don’t get cocky, Murdock, I’m sure you’ll soon be so stuck you’ll have to parkour your way out.”

“I don’t doubt it,” he flashes her a grin, surprised when her pulse flutters, “beer?”

“Actually, I brought red wine,” she shuffles briefly in the bag and pulls out a bottle that glugs faintly as she places it in his waiting hands.

“Let me guess,” Matt says as his fingers move across the label, “cherry, oakwood and subtle hints of headache?”

Karen laughs again, “actually, this is a Château Pape Clément,” she says enunciating each syllable and Matt almost drops the bottle, it’s so sexy, “it has a cork and everything.”

Her fingers slide over his when she takes the bottle back, pulling out a corkscrew from the bag. After a slight twist and a light pop, Matt is engulfed in the heady scent of spice and tobacco, damp earth and ripe blackcurrant.

“Here,” she hands him a glass, “try it.”

The sip slides silkily down his throat, with flavors that ripen differently on the tip and the back of his tongue.

“This is…”

“Good, right?” She says through a heady moan that does him not favors around his crotch, “Thomas picked it.”

“Oh, do we have a wine connoisseur on our hands?” He asks casually while the wine turns bitter in his mouth.

“No, not really. Ok. Maybe a little. He works part-time in a little wine shop, just to make ends meet while he gets his engineering degree. But it’s great stuff…mostly organic wines. Lots of niche products. Heaven for wine collectors.”

“Karen, this must’ve cost…” He hates it, to owe this man anything, when he already has his everything.

“Oh, don’t worry about it. He gets all sorts of discounts… I didn’t even ask for it, actually. He came home with it when I told him I’d be having dinner with you. Said we needed to celebrate.”

“Celebrate what?”

“Your imminent recovery.”

Karen takes the two loaded plates to the table and Matt sits down, struggling with his fork.

“Does he…know?” He asks slowly, sliding the fork between his index and third finger to work around his thumb that is trapped by the cast.

“No. Nono,” Karen stops to scoop up the rice that Matt accidentally catapulted out of his plate, “Of course not.”

Her heart confirms it, steady. Matt suspects the smile in her voice has something to do with his food acrobatics. Suddenly ravenous, he seems to be incapable to get the food into his mouth.

“So what’s the story?” He asks, wanting to distract her from the fact that he has decided that he should forgo cutlery and eat the way God intended: with his hands.

“Mononucleosis.”

“What?!” Matt almost chokes on the first morsel of rice and chicken.

“I panicked. Mrs Frampton asked me after a couple of weeks why you still weren’t back and it’s the first disease that I could think of that lasted a while.”

“Isn’t that…like…the high school kissing disease?!” He splutters around a tiny fragment of rice that is making itself at home in his trachea.

“Yeah…sorry.”

“What about my hands?” He wipes his fingers hastily on the napkin, then lifts them up to showcase the gauze.

“We were hoping you could come up with a story for them. You know, one of your ‘Karen, I’m blind’ tales,” the ease with which she talks about his old lies is a reminder of how much time has passed since they were more than this. It makes him sad, to reminisce this way. He wishes that life was closer.

“I thought you never believed those,” he keeps the tone light, not wanting to spoil the mood. Not yet.

“No. But not everyone is as smart as I am,” she says, her words curving in her wine glass while she takes a sip. Matt follows the liquid as it travels, streaking her lower lip, sliding smoothly down her tongue, then vanishing quickly in the bow of her neck.

“Gosh, Foggy must be getting a kick out of this,” he says before he has resumed thinking, his brain all over her instead of in his skull. But the memory his words unfurl close his stomach all the way up to his throat, turning the food to ash in his mouth. Matt drops the scoop of pad thai back into his plate. Karen seems to perceive the sudden heaviness in his chest and puts down her fork.

“I know he misses you too, Matt. You should call him.”

Matt just shakes his head, scratching the residual food oils out of his fingers rhythmically against the napkin, even though they are clean. The dirt is in his soul this time, and there’s only one way to get that washed.

“Karen, the thing with Foggy…It was –“

“- your fault? Sure,” she interrupts and his heart clenches in relief, “what was it this time? Another secret identity? You finally told him you can’t stand the sound of him crunching his food?”

“Heh, maybe I should’ve led with that…” he tries to pull back the easy atmosphere from moments ago, the smiles that he discovered planted on his face, the guilt he swept under the rug to be dealt with later.

“He’s your best friend, Matt. You are his. You managed to work through discovering your secret identity after decades. What could be so unforgivable now?”

_I am_ , Matt thinks. But how can he explain? He is not ready.

“What kind of engineer?” He blurts out to buy some time, to search the sky for his shooting star, that cadence in her tone that makes her sparkle.

“What?”

“Thomas. You said he was studying to become an engineer. What kind?”

“Environmental,” and there it is, fondness and pride sweeping through him like an icy breeze, “well. He has a degree in civil engineering, he is getting his master’s in environmental engineering. He has big plans to save this city, make the houses more passive, more eco-friendly…the way he talks about Hell’s Kitchen…”

“What?”

“He reminds me of you, a little.”

“Oh, I’m sure he is much more honorable than I am,” he wishes he didn’t have to know just how true that is.

“Different methods, sure. His are a little less violent,” she traces her fingers over the bandages on his hand. Warmth seeps through the pores in the fabric, always a second after the pressure of her touch dissipates. Matt feels his skin flush in response.

“But you know, the way he talks about Hell’s Kitchen, like it’s a living, breathing thing. How the ordinary people are at its heart. I’m not sure he’d be willing to die for them but getting his ass in trouble…seems he has a knack for it just as much as the rest of us.”

“Well, isn’t he lucky that his girlfriend has access to the best lawyers in town.”

His girlfriend. His. He said it so easily. _His_ , _not mine_.

“Not sure about that,” Karen jokes, and Matt kicks her playfully under the table. She giggles, “but it does help that his girl has access to the best superhero in town. Knowing that you will be there, watching over the city. It makes all of us braver, you know.”

Matt shifts guiltily.

“Ah. I’m not sure that part of me has a place in my life anymore.”

He’s not sure any part of him has a place in life.

“You said that once before, and frankly, I’m glad it wasn’t true.”

Matt’s fingers start to tingle, palms beginning to sweat. He thrusts a handful of food into his mouth, forcing his jaw to chew instead of telling her the truth.

“You never told me how you met?” He changes the subject again, skirting around the cracks that are waiting to plunge them into a world that is all too real.

“I was looking into a tenancy case, trying to source some building plans and there he was, searching for the same plans to test this booster pump for the mains valve. It all got very technical… Sorry. I’m boring you with Thomas talk, aren’t I?”

“No…it’s. I like listening to your voice.”

Karen laughs, tossing his confession aside with an easy swing of her hand, “you buttering me up counsellor? I already handed over the food, you are not getting more than that tonight.”

“Can’t blame an injured blind man for wishing,” he gives her his most nonchalant smile.

She scoffs, “I’m not so sure you are blind OR injured,” but her hand moves to comb back her hair, tidying loose strands that aren’t there.

“Your voice changes when you are…” Matt continues, urged on by her apparent nervousness.

“Digesting Thai food?”

“I was thinking more…happy.”

Karen goes silent, even in the way she breathes, and Matt kicks himself for making it uncomfortable.

“I wasn’t looking for it, Matt,” she says gently, “it just sort of…Happened.”

“I really am happy for you, you know that, right?” And in a way he is, really. Glad she has someone whole to catch her when she falls.

“Thanks, Matt. It means a lot,” she reaches across the tiny table for his left hand that is lying uselessly at his side, “it’ll happen to you too, you know? You just need to get out of this place. You’ll find her.”

_I already have_ , he thinks, feeling her touch with every nerve in his body. Matt stays quiet, a little mesmerized, under her spell. He’s never really been allowed a moment to say goodbye before. Things tend to fall apart right under his feet and all he can do is to try and stay upright while the ground slowly disappears. He enjoys it now, memorizes small details, as he would have done as a kid if he’d been told that it was the last time that he would see his father’s face.

“It’s funny…” she says eventually.

“Hm?”

“How everything changes and nothing does. Look at us! Are we even the same people we were when I first came here, and you offered me this exact Thai food? And yet here we are, again. In the same place, eating the same food.”

“Well, the food is still good.”

“And the company even better.”

She’s moving closer, a smile in her voice, a flush in her cheeks. He can’t see her, he never could, but in moments like these he likes to think that he can. He pictures the soft swell of her lips, the contented tinge that rises all the way up from her neck, blotchy and pure, as subtle as a whispered secret. He knows the exact way her silky hair is trapped in the nape of her neck to free her gaze, how he would drown in it, how it would tell him more than his senses ever could.

Her index traces a made-up symbol on the back of his hand, and she lingers, a little too long, on her next inhale. Subtle hints of an evening that could go differently, in another future perhaps, if Matt had become the man that his father had hoped he would be. He knows, right there and then, that it is time. Right now. The candle has run out of wax, the flame is flickering, exhausted. Darkness is the inevitable end in his life. He can’t hold off the night any longer.

“Karen, I need to tell you something,” he begins even though he has no end. There is no version of the truth that can save him. No white lie. How can he reveal his biggest flaw when really, he is just praying she could love him back?

“What is it?”

She is still speaking softly, because she doesn’t know. The Matt before her is not the man she thinks he is. Oh, how sight can be misleading.

“It’s about that night,” he takes a full breath that wavers like his voice, “the night that I…that I…”

_Killed him_ , say it, say it damnit.

Her hand closes around his, “it’s ok, Matt,” she says gently.

But it’s not, so Matt pulls his hand away. He scrubs his face, hating how his fingers will stink like food for the next week, yet still needing some sort of shield, because he can’t bring himself show her just how deep his issues go. He wonders where he left his glasses, chastising himself for not looking for them sooner.

“Karen, that night…I couldn’t stop hitting the man,” he stands, turns, faces the wall, or the window, he isn’t sure, he can’t tell, his senses focused behind him, to Karen that has straightened like she wants to follow him, like she wants to _comfort_ him.

“I know Matt, I understand,” she repeats, confused.

“No Karen. Wait. It’s not…the same,” he runs his hand through his hair, leaving a trail of grease. He doesn’t care, “I didn’t _want_ to stop.”

Karen is silent, because she doesn’t understand. And she can’t understand, because Matt is not saying it right. He paces up and down the short strip by his window, and then stops, having nowhere to go. He can’t escape from himself. Not this time.

“That night I was…angry. Because,” his throat is inching closed around every word. Matt stops to force another shaky breath into his lungs, “I was. Selfish, because,” his fist clenches, his cast starts to bend, “because I was.” _Shit._ “I was thinking of you…and..T-Thomas.”

Matt’s breathing hard from the effort, each knuckle in his right hand earsplittingly loud, and still he can’t focus, not on that, not on the fire in his chest or the ice in his guts. He can only hear her, and his words, how they are slowly sinking in and she is turning into a statue of shock, just like she did that night he turned up with a mask and a secret.

“Matt. What did you do,” she stutters, horrified, quivering. She needs him to say it, once and for all. There can be no misunderstandings this time, no misplaced accusations. Matt walks back to the table, sitting down in front of her to give her his full self, whole, with no masks. Let her walk away, forget all that she thought was good.

“I was running patrol and I…overheard…” he can’t continue, too mortified. He can tell Karen is thinking back to that night, trying to remember where she was, with who, doing what. It doesn’t take long. A few heartbeats, maybe. Neither of them is breathing, so Matt can’t count those.

Her hand moves too fast for his haywire brain. She slaps him, hard. The sound is what shocks him the most, more than the sharp burn, flaring white hot across the side of his face. He feels every intricate weave from the pads of her fingers, and the hate for the lies that will always draw them apart.

“You were there,” she doesn’t say it, her lungs are shut, busy hiccupping on nothing, dry sobs, or maybe just outrage, but Matt can hear the words in the listless movement of her lips, “you were there!”

He predicts the second slap in the hype of her pulse but doesn’t move to avoid it. It lands just lower than the first one, confusing nerve endings that are already ringing with fire. The friction from the impact increases the temperature of her hand by a degree or two; it makes it so easy to track when it moves to her mouth to hold back her strangled sobs.

She stands, and Matt doesn’t move, doesn’t say anything. His mind is white shock, two slaps that said it all, but hurt somewhere that is far from his face.

“Don’t ever speak to me again.”

Her voice doesn’t break once, despite the tears that are filling Matt’s mouth with salt. He nods, his only goodbye. He can’t bring himself to follow her footsteps as they bring her away from him for the last time. He hopes he won’t have to remember this part.

He stays on the chair, tired from the force of his own disappointment, of Foggy’s, of his dad’s, of Stick’s, of Elektra’s, of Karen’s. Of the whole city that he let down.

_The butcher of Hell’s Kitchen._

He is just the stuff of nightmares now. And the terror is all his own.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you've finished reading this chapter, please pass by the notes section and collect your free squishy hug. In limited numbers I also have choc chip cookies and Charlie Cox smiles. Please help yourselves.
> 
> Does it make you feel better that I had to google engineering shit and 'good red wines' to write this chapter? No? I'm sorry. 
> 
> I'm sorry.
> 
> I'M SORRY!
> 
> (Shoutout to Emanon for the awesome song suggestion. I've lost track of which came first, the song or the chapter, but I'd be lying if I didn't tell you that you guys are helping me shape this story.)


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> *narrators voice* Previously, on Blame it on Ed Sheeran: Matt told Karen the truth and she took it...badly.

_And now that we're through_

_I just don't know what to do_

_I just don't know what to do with myself_

_I don't know what to do with myself_

_~_ **_I just don’t know what to do with myself_** _by **White Stripes**_

“Hey man! Watch where you are going!”

The voice gets lost in the icy wind as Matt walks on, hands deep in his oversized jacket. His hood is up for anonymity, wintry gusts nestling around the crevice, sharp like those slaps that he is trying so hard to outrun. Matt picks up the pace.

He almost loses his balance on a sheet of ice, the brick wall he slams into scraping zig zags into the heel of his palm. His cane wouldn’t have helped him notice it, but together with his tinted glasses they might have brought an ounce of giving a shit in a passerby, one that may have convinced Matt that he isn’t as invisible as his world, freezing in fleeting glimpses that never sum up to a whole. But Matt left them both behind at home, refusing to wear his blind lawyer façade. Maybe he can just be this now, meet his life in the middle and be no one at all.

He stomps his boots harder when he wanders on, his footsteps the only noise he can rely on to make his world a little more than 2D. But some of the pavement is covered in snow, the crisp crunch muffling any echo, and Matt has to fight the urge to hold his hands out in front of him. A beeping car wooshes past, giving him a wavering 360 degrees view of the street around him. Matt pushes forward before it can dissipate into a blindfold.

Eventually, it’s just muscle memory. The skin of his face has caught fire, no longer able to fight the crushing iciness of the stubborn winter wind. The puffs of air that startle out of his burning lungs dissipate in small clouds. They do nothing to help Matt measure the world ahead of him, except to leave droplets of moisture in his beard. They freeze rhythmically, to almost snowflakes when he inhales, only to be melted by his next exhale. They tempt him to slow his breathing, wickedly curious to find out if each snowflake would be as unique as they say. If only he could get himself not to take the next breath...

The ladder of a fire escape steals all the leftover warmth from his hands. The metal screams under his urgent weight. Matt holds on tight, feeling his flesh tear near the scrapes, the pain made angrier by the cold that is just that side of numbing. At least the stench is muted, muck decomposing, frozen in time. Another clue that he can’t read from a city that wants to shut him out.

He climbs steadily, savoring the burn in his muscles. Fibers slowly release latent lactic acid, leaching it into the blood flow in a searing sting that follows his movements. He pulls too hard on his right shoulder, unusually tender from unuse, when his foot slips on drip drops of melting snow. Catching himself with the tips of his fingers avoids a probable fall to his death but fucks up all of Claire’s hard work when the bones under the thin skin of his knuckles split open from the effort. Matt hisses, then offers a smile upwards, to the sky, a challenge, to God. Let Him care. Let Him try again. Matt might not rely on instinct a second time. And who knows, the fall might feel like flying.

He reaches the roof quickly and lets go of the creaking rung that feels permanently branded into the flesh of his hands. The cast is a mess, bent metal rods and gauze that flaps aimlessly in the wind. Matt considers pulling it off. He’d be free at least. Free to break.

He’s searching for a glimpse of her, or perhaps one of himself, a grimy reflection in a broken mirror. But deep down he knows she won’t be here. The traffic is too slow, the streets empty. Hints of alcohol and stale breath whisper his way once in a while, muddled with the sweetness of sizzling onions and burning pork from a busy hot dog stand. Lone leftover stragglers wonder dispiritedly in the cold, their path once linear and now curving like the result of a complicated math equation. Matt’s not sure about the time, wills himself not to consider it even, but he knows it must be after dark, long after work hours. Maybe it’s this notion that has led him here, to the roof of Nelson, Murdock and Page. Seeking home like he would in a yellowing photograph of smiling faces; seeking home in the memory. Because home is not what it used to be, if he were to get to it. Because home is not home anymore.

He throws his senses down, past the sleeping figures and the tv they forgot to turn off, lower than the owner’s dog that is staring at the ceiling. He pushes on, into the big blank void that he once took for granted. Lights off, papers still, Matt can’t see anything at all at first. His nose is numb, icy and red at the tip, it can’t distinguish anything beyond the occasional heady vapors that melt seemingly compact air as they inch into his lungs. But then the old radiator in Karen’s office turns on. Boiling water glugs through the old pipes, and with a steady hiss and a _tap tap tap_ of dripping water, the room takes shape. Matt scours the space, like he could trail his fingers on the walls, on each surface, wanting to claim it again. He takes a deep breath, running it through his mouth as he would a fine wine, and ignores the sting of the cold when he finds her there. Sure, she is tarnished by a thousand other smells and shapes and colors, but she is there. Foggy’s smell is hiding right behind the next corner, saturating his office and everything he has laid his hands on. It makes Matt almost smile, even now, when it’s more of a flick of his cheeks then a curve in his lips. Matt wrenches his senses away, to his office. His smell is there, fainter, disappearing with every new gust of wind from the door swinging open, from every new body entering their small space. Like a ghost, fading fast, looking for that anchor to his old life. His old smell. His old self. Maybe that’s what Matt was searching for all along. Because they never tell you that you had it all until it’s gone.

It’s only there now, in his office, amid the papers in braille that nobody has had a sense to move yet. There’s an old cardboard box perched on the corner of his desk. Empty, for now. A decision half made to erase him completely. Matt doesn’t linger to check if it smells more like Karen or Foggy.

He springs from the roof just to feel the fall. The wind pulls at his hair, his guts drop faster than him, air solidifies only to slap his face as he goes down. Adrenaline lights up each nerve and synapse, jolting electricity into his blood stream. He can see it all, as he falls, each brick flying past, each anchor that could stop his fall, the myriad of sleeping bodies that wouldn’t witness his decision, only it’s outcomes. The world blurs in slow motion, mottled in an instinctive fear.

Matt’s arm opens wide and he swings from the last rung of a ladder that ends mid-building. He bounces off the opposite wall, sinking most of his weight in the angle of his bent knees, then shoots off, flipping to tame gravity, and lands heavily on the lid of a dumpster with an almighty crash that wakes up half the block based on the sudden quiet left behind by interrupted snores. He’s gone before the first bark has sprung free from the startled dogs.

*

Matt’s not sure how he ends up here. He’s pushed all conscious thought to the clenching of muscle and drenching of blood and movement of air. Like physics alone could quench that gnawing emptiness, forlorn and spinning like a broken compass. Gravity reversed, he can’t find his home when he is not searching for the solid four walls, no. A place where he belongs, at least a little, not in a used-to way, but in a now, a present tense. The office is empty, the streets have stopped calling his name. But here…maybe here.

His fingers skim over the coarse woolen blanket that is pulled tight around the cot. If he moves them up, he knows he will find a clean sheet, cotton and polyester, itchy and sharp, tucked neatly under the mattress with a perfect fold by the head of the bed. Then the pillow that tries to have every shape and none at all, always supporting his head wrong, begging for a punch. Matt picks it up and presses it tightly around his face, inhaling deeply. It’s there, still strong. Another version of him, broken, bloody, dusty, lost. Tears flood his eyes as he chokes on the first sob, a surging fire flaring in his chest and tightening coils around his lungs. Grief hits him all at once, a wail of pain building in the back of his throat, one that Matt buries into the flesh of the pillow along with the tears. Matt mourns and at first he’s not sure what, when it’s everything and nothing, when it’s another version of himself that is now out of reach.

*

It's a little while later, or maybe not so little, that his ears prick at the sound of approaching footsteps. Muffled by worn slippers and slowed by interrupted sleep, Maggie makes her way down the stone steps that lead to the laundry room. She travels confidently in the dark, and Matt is almost impressed by her lack of weapons or protection of any kind, not even a phone. Nothing but her iron will and faith that God will make whatever it is ok.

He knows when she spots him because her heart simpers, jams two beats into one, then speeds up to resume its steady thrum, as if it too would be ashamed to be caught as being anything but unimpressed. She considers him, sitting on the floor by the bed, staring blankly into a soaked pillow. He hopes there is not enough light for the drying tears to glisten on his face.

“Mass was three days ago,”

“I know.”

“You missed it again.”

“Yeah.”

“You here for confession?”

“No.”

“Looking for someone to blame it all on?”

“No.”

“This is not a hotel, Matthew. It’s the middle of the night. We have rules.”

“I know.”

“Are you hurt?” she asks him like she asked all the other perfunctory questions, like she doesn’t care at all. But Matt hears it, a softening in her pulse, stubbornly rejected by her solid heart, a vacillating squeezing of her lungs as she considers him more closely in the dark.

“No,” he tells her, and in her sigh he reads his lie.

“Sit on the bed,” she turns on her heels, disappearing in the soft flip flap of her slippers, “don’t move.”

Matt doesn’t try to track her, leaning into the echoing silence of the crypt upstairs. He imagines it full of song, harmonious voices dappling like sunlight beams, warming him from the inside out.

Her return is louder, clanging with the possessions in her arms. Something wintry cold and sour, a first aid box, worn from use, fresh gauze, that foul smelling poultice she used to disinfect his wound sloshing around in a bottle. It’s fermented slightly. Then something hot that leaves a trail of steam to mark her passage; sweet, milky.

“Hot chocolate,” he says, before she places the scalding mug into his hands, “I’m not a child.”

“Could’ve fooled me.”

Maggie lowers the first aid box and perches on the cot by his side. The lid squeaks open and bounces faintly as it falls open on the mattress. A lamp clicks on by his side. Maggie takes his free hand and wordlessly starts removing what’s left of Claire’s intricate bandages. She tosses all the fabric to one side, then considers the misshapen piece of metal, finally pressing it against the bed frame to straighten it out. She drops it by the box and holds out her hand. Mat transfers the mug to his unbandaged hand, stretching his knuckles out around the ceramic, while the bones throb and pulse in sharp flares. Some fractures have been shredded open again, Matt knows it in the minuscule tears that are swelling with inflammation.

Matt takes a sip to distract himself from the scrutiny boring into his face in such close proximity. The warmth shivers through his arms and shoulders, chasing goosebumps on his skin and budding subtly in his chest. It’s too sweet, the powder one of those artificial blends that are mostly a mix of powdered milks and fake cocoa and sweeteners, but the flavor is familiar and comforting like an old worn-in sweater. Another time, another life, left behind. He bites the inside of his cheek not to fall into another sob, drawing blood from his skin. He swallows his discomfort with another sip of hot chocolate, while Maggie removes everything from his right hand.

“What happened?” She’s asking it of his hands, or the grazes on his palms maybe. Matt answers with the truth. All is one tonight, past and present, action and consequences. Consequences mostly.

“I told the truth.”

“And?”

“I lost everything,” he prods the cut in his cheek with his tongue, urging it to hurt louder than his thoughts.

Matt’s almost disappointed when Maggie doesn’t comment. He’s tempted to pick a fight with her too, blame her for handing over the wrong advice. Maybe she knows this, so instead she turns his right hand around in her palms, presses lightly against the fresh scrapes. Four droplets peak out, but never swell enough to break the surface tension. She nods to herself, then takes the mug from his hands. Matt is surprised at how little is left inside, swirling powdery milky dregs. He must’ve been cold, or hungry or thirsty or tired. Everything is so out of reach these days, he wouldn’t know which.

“Go wash your hands, then I’ll clean the wound and get your hands bandaged up again. I won’t be able to do anything as intricate as you had, but that’s your fault for ruining it in the first place.”

Matt nods, moving to the big ceramic sink at the far end of the room. He opens both taps even though the hot one never worked. The water is ice-cold and as merciless as the bar of generic soap, but it feels good against the tenderness in his knuckles. He moves to wet his face, washing away the imprints crusty with salt, scrubbing hard just to feel it sting.

A siren wails past, three, no four blocks away. Matt tilts his head out of habit, then adjusts and locks in. An ambulance, a driver and two passengers, one lying on the gurney, four hands pressing down on the same wet patch in the abdomen. He can just make out the erratic beeping of the terrified patient above the squeal of the tires. The noise is almost overwhelming, even at that distance, but Matt knows how to tune it down. He knows how to _see_ past the glare. The patient is scared. He’s been stabbed, shot maybe. He is young. The paramedic is talking random reassurances, her tone calm, because she’s seen this before. But Matt hears the lie. Even she knows there isn’t much time left. Even she knows it might not be enough.

“Matthew?” Maggie’s hand on his shoulder startles him. He is clenching the basin with both hands, dripping blood and water along the sides. He didn’t realize he had moved. He shakes his head, trying to empty his ears from the noise and wipes his face in the towel that Maggie is holding out. He doesn’t have space for the guilt, but it slowly takes hold, low in his gut. The city he failed, the lives that are lost…his fault. His. His.

“Matthew,” Maggie says again.

Matt can’t get himself to lower the towel from his face. He crushes it harder, wanting the pain, a short hitch hitch hitch in his lungs making his shoulders jump convulsively, right under Maggie’s palm. It’s Maggie that moves the fabric away, that lowers his shaking hands to hers.

“Oh, Matthew.”

She breaks and then he does, in that quiet ‘oh’ that washes all pretenses away. She cups his face, then moves to stroke a tear away with the back of her hand. And there’s something there, something freed, something long lost, something…something maternal, worn and frail and forgotten.

The thought alone, of leaning into a weakness, of the softness…Matt crumples when her arms reach for him, small and frightened, a little boy that doesn’t know how to be alone, that doesn’t _want_ to be alone. She shines bright and wide, a moon, a star, a sun, and Matt holds on, fingers buried in her sturdy arms, drawing unsteady breaths from the cloth of her gown, while darkness shifts against his irises.

“Mom,” he croaks, “m-mom.”

His mother doesn’t let go.

*

It’s quiet while his mom re-wraps his hands. Dawn is peeking, the faint light a tinge warmer on Matt’s cheek. He sniffs a little, his diaphragm still jumpy, but the tears have finally stopped. She made him wash his face again, after she wiped the worst of it off with the towel. For once Matt hadn’t argued. It was nice, to have a grown up make the decisions for him. Just for now. Just this once.

The shape of the metal pane is off, having been bent too many times. Each ridge presses uncomfortably against Matt’s wrist. The gauze is sharper too, none of the silk comforts that Claire wound in. Maybe Matt wanted this all along, undeserving of comforts, always more at home in the pain. He helps his mother tie the last knot on the gauze, holding it tight with one index while she creates a neat bow. She tucks the excess strands in by his palms.

“There,” she says. Then, “don’t mess it up again.”

“Thanks,” his voice is still hoarse, his eyes swollen. Matt feels strangely emptied.

Silence. Maggie holds his bandaged hands and Matt closes his eyes, settles in the warmth. A bird calls outside, nest shifting in the cold wind. Upstairs, the sleeping heartbeats of the orphaned children remind him of falling rain. It’s a peaceful sound. Hopeful.

“I told you once before that when people come to us with questions, they usually bring their own answers too,” she says quietly.

“I remember.”

“So. What’s your answer?”

“I don’t have one.”

He still needs to find his questions.

“But you are here.”

“So?”

“You got up.”

Matt tests the ridges of the fabric with a finger. Maggie moves her hand to his face, just under the jaw. Matt stills against the overwhelming urge to lean into it.

“Last time I saw you, you thought you never could. You are here. You are up. Was it impossible?”

It was. In so many different ways. Yet somehow, he is here. He is up.

“I…guess not.”

“So. Go get it back.”

“What?”

“All of it.”

“Ha! You make it sound so simple,” he moves his head away from her touch, but gently, wantingly.

“Oh, but it is simple. It’s just not easy.”

Matt grins. It’s a little shaky, like all of him this morning. He tests the range of motion, furling his fingers around empty air. The pads of his fingers are free, sure, but he is otherwise close to useless. But he’ll make do. He’ll find a way. He _wants_ to. And that’s everything. It’s enough.

He stands, adjusts his coat, covers his head in the hood but turns on his way out of the side door, finds her fire in the dark.

“I’ll see you on Sunday,” he tells her.

He can’t be sure, he never is, but the smile that Maggie wears looks a lot like pride.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First of - thanks to Emanot (formerly Emanon) again! Here's your first act as a formal member of AO3. Welcome! And thanks for the lyric suggestion, they were too perfect for this Chapter, I just had to use them!
> 
> It's nice to be excited about writing again. Seeing you react to the chapters is everything, really. When I wrote the last chapter I was mostly laughing evilly, which is terrible, I know. But it's fun to dig holes and set things on fire just to watch them burn (gosh, I sound like a maniac). This one? It made me cry. You'll probably smile instead, it's a little more hopeful. Finally.
> 
> I'm not quite sure how this fic has amassed over 200 comments. Sure, most of them are me replying, and there's def a fair proportion that went off in random hilarious tangents (I have no regrets). But this is why this story is all you, you know? You are all writing it with me. So thank you for that.
> 
> I realized the nature of the comments might be a little intimidating for the quieter readers. These convoluted character interpretations that most of you are doing are something that I wouldn't be able to do myself. So kudos to all of you! It's fascinating, really. They are my little treats that I get to read instead of reading this fic. But in case this is not your thing, and you are worried that means you shouldn't say a word, can I just reassure you that once I got a comment just saying 'aw' and I smiled for a week straight. Feel free to leave two letters or one word or an emoji if that's what you feel like doing. Writers just love not to feel alone. 
> 
> I'll do my very best to keep up the posting schedule. Stay safe and happy!


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> *narrators voice* Previously, on Blame it on Ed Sheeran, Matt stumbled into Maggie and she gave him an extra nudge forward.

_The broken clock is a comfort, it helps me sleep tonight_

_Maybe it can't stop tomorrow from stealing all my time_

_And I am here still waiting though I still have my doubts_

_I am damaged at best, like you've already figured out_

_~ **Broken** by **Lifehouse**_

****

The screams are getting louder. The crying is no longer muffled. The prayers, oh so many prayers, are whispered straight into his ears. Matt wrings his hand in and out of the padlock each time his city calls. The devil simmers, scorching, under his skin.

Once he heads for the key. It’s a woman, she’s scared but she won’t scream. Her heart pounds in Matt’s temples, in his fists, as she hands over her purse. Matt can’t, he _can’t_ , but he has to. His fingers press against the cold metal of the key and it happens all at once. Like that time when his lung collapsed, they flatten in his chest. There’s blood on his hands again, it drips thickly, congeals, sticky, in the space between his fingers. Matt wheezes, pulling at his top, retches on all fours.

_Fight!_ Yells Stick in his head.

_Get up Matty, there’s work to do_ , incites his father.

The darkness takes on a lighter quality as he fights to find his breath. His shirt is torn open around his chest, but his grip can’t reach inside, it can’t wrench open his ribs. His chest is a cage, locked, his spine curves, his legs kick. Small yelps build in his throat.

Outside, a lone tear falls down the woman’s cheek. The purse wasn’t enough.

A breathless scream tears itself out of Matt’s lungs. He writhes on the wooden floor, reaching for the lock. _Help_ , he begs his God, _help them_.

_Help me_.

The devil stays shut in black fabric, out of reach.

*

The days are quiet, finally. The sun chases all nightmares away, the monsters head home with their haul. Sobs of the victims and survivors are stifled by the city waking up. Matt wants to snatch some rest but he hears them still, feels them, in his mind, in his healing hands.

Every failure leaves a scar.

*

It’s evening. Matt doesn’t want to admit that he is running away from something when he reaches the door, but in a way, he is. He seeks atonement and a distraction in equal measures. Maybe if one part of him can rest, the rest of him will find peace too. Plus Foggy’s yelling may be just enough to cover up the noises emerging straight from hell.

He’ll ask for his job back, that’s it. They can be professional about this. He wouldn’t ask for this much either, if only responsibilities stopped when your life did. But his meagre savings are slowly dwindling to nothing at all, and it would be far more embarrassing to have to ask for monetary favors. He can earn his keep; he is not an invalid.

The final notice on his online bills flash in his mind when he lifts his hand to ring the bell. They have a red tinge to them, urgent, angry, even when his screen reader delivers them in monotones.

“Well, well, well, look what the cat dragged in,” Matt’s always been impressed by how steady Marci remains, no matter what life throws her way. She is the opposite of Foggy, who is all sparks and color. Ruthless, when Foggy is all heart. Maybe that’s what makes her such a damn good lawyer.

“Marci,” he says in way of salute, “is Foggy in?”

He knows he is, he can hear the shift of his lungs in the other room. He seems to be changing out of his suit, languidly pulling on softer, worn in clothes that make him sigh quietly in respite.

“Foggy-bear, your boy-toy is here,” she drawls, moving out of the door frame.

Matt takes that as his queue to enter but doesn’t move further than a few steps inside.

Foggy appears, and his smell is so concentrated it feels compact. It makes something desperate swell in Matt’s chest. Unlike his, Foggy’s chest is not so welcoming. Mild surprise, not enough to make Matt think that his visit was entirely unexpected. And then something more, something cold, something steadied.

“He is not my boy-toy,” he tells Marci, then, “and you don’t need to leave,” when she picks up her purse.

“God, yes, I do. Too much drama. I need to have a few martinis in me if I have to deal with the aftermath of whatever this is.”

She kisses Foggy deftly on the cheek then slips into her heels. She pauses when she passes Matt in the hall.

“I find him less than whole and perfectly happy you’ll have to deal with me, Murdock.”

And with that, she leaves, the cloud of Chanel Number 5 a lingering threat.

“Hey Fogs,” he tells the nervous rhythm standing by the couch.

“You look like shit,” says Foggy.

Matt feels like shit. He can’t remember the last time he slept or ate or drank anything. His last conversation with another human was that with his mom, having smashed his phone sometime during the endless empty hours following Karen’s departure. He is grateful that he is blind because the leftover wine he threw against the wall will probably leave a stain. But at least he hasn’t ruined the bandages around his hands again, right?

Foggy slumps into the couch and makes a weird gesture in the air. Matt can’t quite distinguish it, but it seems friendly enough, so he makes his way to the couch too, leaving his cane to lean by the wall.

“You told Karen.”

It’s not a question. Matt answers anyways, “yep.”

Silence. Matt looks for a reaction, but Foggy’s body is giving away too much and nothing at all.

“How did she take it?”

Matt doesn’t say anything.

“You know she is pissed at me too? For not telling her.”  
  


“I’m sorry Foggy. I didn’t want to get between you two.”

“When do you not? When is your life’s mess ever only your problem?!”

There it is, the lingering tension, years of pent-up frustration and things left unsaid.

“Look, Foggy, I’m grateful for all that you did for me when I was…less…” he shakes his head, “but I never asked for you to drop everything and come to my rescue.”

“As if we had a choice,” mutters Foggy.

“You did, Foggy. You always do. What I do in my spare time is my decision, and the consequences are mine, and mine alone to bear.”

“That’s what you don’t get Matt!” he lifts off the couch, starts pacing the room, “we are all in this with you. You think you can push us away, protect us that way, but when shit hits the fan we all go down with you!”

Matt is silent, guilty. He toys with a loose thread in the cuff of his shirt. He licks his lips to try and ask the next question, but his mouth is too dry to provide more than a humid rasp of his tongue.

“Is that w-why you do it? To protect yourself from my shit?”

Foggy’s voice becomes small, a quiver in the expanse of his ribcage, “no, of course not.”

His heart beats true, true, true, even when it is so ragged and worn and tired. Matt thinks he is just as tired of this little dance, this tentative back and forth between them. He used to think that the truth would set him free, make his inside match the outside, but the fact of the matter is that it didn’t. Maybe he’d been too late, he’d let Foggy get used to a half version of himself and Matt would always feel foreign to him now that both his sides had resurfaced. Maybe Foggy didn’t want Matt to have another part, one that was such a nuisance to accommodate in his life, or one that was so completely at odds with everything that Matt had tried to represent.

“What do you want from me Foggy?” Most of all, Matt is tired of being a disappointment.

Foggy doesn’t answer straight away. He loops the room, picks up something leathery and compact, runs it through his hands a few times, puts it back down. His feet then trail back, back to Matt, back to the couch.

“I want you to be happy, Matt. That’s all any of us ever wanted for you.”

Matt adjusts his glasses, pushing them up where they slid down the bridge of his nose. He keeps his face lowered, clasping and unclasping his hands in his lap. Wanting to give Foggy the one thing he asks for. Not knowing how.

“I…I’m trying,” he admits.

Foggy sighs. The something cold and ruthless in his chest warms a little.

“And, you know, since you are asking,” he says, and his voice is Foggy, so Foggy, “maybe if you’d just stop being a stubborn self-absorbed ninja, you’d realize that shit wouldn’t hit the fan half as much if you’d just let us be a team.”

Foggy puts his arm tentatively on Matt’s wrist, “The sign says Nelson, Murdock AND Page. You should get your feelers on it sometime.”

Matt scoffs through a small smile, the pressure of Foggy’s touch bleeding into his flesh, into his arms, his shoulders, his heart.

“So. Can I come back to work?” He asks casually.

“I thought you’d never ask.”

And when Matt extends his fist, the sting of Foggy’s knuckles is the sweetest feeling in the world.

*

He stays for a while longer. Foggy orders that disgusting Chinese take-out that even Marci has vetoed because it leaves a layer of oil on every surface of your insides and outs. Matt eats it just to hear Foggy’s pulse smoothen, worried that the constant hype will cause premature heart disease more than his diet.

They don’t talk about the incident, or the aftermath or even about Karen. They talk about law school, the classes, the exams, the ‘do you remember that time?’. They laugh, Foggy a little more than Matt, maybe a little deeper too. He’s not sure if his smiles are real, or if Foggy is even beginning to forgive him, but the sound of his voice, the beat of his heart, the swish of air in his lungs…it shuts out the rest. And it’s enough. For now.

When it starts to rain, the sound of every droplet whooshing into one, Matt makes a move. He promises he’ll take a cab, but then he doesn’t, not wanting to return home so quickly, hoping the walk will exhaust him enough to finally sleep. He listens to Foggy and Marci fight from around the block, her refusing to kiss him until the Chinese is out of his system, him promising he will swallow some mouth wash, _c’mere doll_. He tries to smush his face into hers. She laughs and swats him away.

Foggy’s happy. Matt can tell it from everyone of his pores. It feels like the beginning of something. Not the end, for once.

He pulls his scarf tighter around his face when the rain turns into snow. It’s like someone turned down the volume; snowflakes land like feathers, thick and unrushed. The city shimmers around him, more a mirage in the desert than brick walls and concrete roads. Matt lets the soothing pattering of falling snow lull his senses, rocks his head from side to side, closes his eyes. The sound of the city flows into his ears, caresses his eardrums. It’s louder this way, but comforting, gentle, cleansing. Drop by drop, his inhibitions fall, the barriers and protective layers that make him cringe against the world set aside in a temporary truce. Matt allows himself to be one with the city for the first time in a long time.

The thrum of electricity in the wires, the hissing of gas and water in the pipes, the heartbeats, the footsteps, the breathing, tires slowing on the whitened asphalt, papers shuffling in books, tvs louder and not, a thousand different channels, a million conversations. Matt makes each one wash through him, past him, until he is inhaling the city with his lungs, until he is exhaling it through his nose. Each noise is blunted when taken as a whole. And now, right now, with the smells muted too, frozen by the weather, with his skin shielded by the winter layers and the darkness steady behind his eyelids, Matt almost feels like he is floating amidst the waves of a calm ocean. He smiles.

The safety of a gun clicks off. Matt may not have heard it if he hadn’t been so spread out, so open to listening to every whisper his city had to make. The finger moves to the trigger, lightly, and with it adrenaline floods Matt’s heart. He doesn’t have time to think, just like turtles to water, Matt zones in with five senses and more, the trembling gun pulsing red hot, flashing on and off on his radar.

“No, no, no wait please. Please. You want money? I can get you money.”

The voice lights up the scene as it wavers towards the pointed gun. A small space filled with containers of different sizes. A shop maybe. Two buildings away, third space on the left. There are only two heartbeats inside, each one sprinting faster than the other. Matt’s already running.

“Empty the register.”

The shooter has lowered his voice by a register. His vocal cords grate to accommodate his desire to appear older than he is. The safety is off, the trigger finger jumpy like it’s owner. He is just one squirrelly move away from changing his life irrevocably.

“I can’t…”

Matt’s lungs shriek as they propel him forward. He doesn’t have senses to spare to be in his own body. He wrenches the scarf off his neck as he rounds the first corner, ties it haphazardly around his face. The loose strands flap behind him as he wills his legs to go faster. He doesn’t give his glasses or cane a second thought when he tosses them in his wake.

The man by the register is fidgety, a mix of bogus adrenaline-fueled courage and fear, the worst concoction possible, where an instinct to save his life will land him in the morgue. Matt wills him to still, steals and extra breath from the cold night and makes it be enough for his burning mess of out of shape limbs.

“I said open it, NOW!”

“I can’t man, I CAN’T, I don’t have the key.”

The shooter doesn’t like the answer, no more than he likes his rapidly thinning options. He shifts to adjust his weight, pulls more of it on his right leg. Matt smells residual anti-inflammatory cream lathered on his left ankle, where a recent sprain is doing its best to heal. He knows what to do before he’s even thrown himself in through the store window, startling a first shot out of the barrel. Matt tracks the bullet and it’s a near miss, the gun being so acutely pointed at the cashier’s chest. He lands on the shooter, sharp like the glass that is raining around them, kicks his sprained ankle into a right angle, listening for the satisfying pop of a dislocated joint. His right hand, bandages be damned, punches the gun away from the cashier’s direction, just as another bullet springs free, grazing Matt’s cheek in pure sizzling heat. It embeds in the ceiling at the same time as Matt’s left fist cracks against the guy’s temple.

It's over in a flash, two gunshots and a broken glass window, clinking like an expensive chandelier. The shooter hits the ground with a crunch, Matt straightens, chest heaving, and lands maybe for the first time in the present, in the right now, in his actions. The cashier stands, frozen in shock. Fear, so bitter on Matt’s tongue, courses in gentle waves up his arms.

“Is he dead?” he asks Matt.

Matt doesn’t need to check, he can feel the heart squeeze with every beat, the tremors of its pulse reach the tips of his fingers, even if faintly. But his knuckles are protesting, and the memory is still too fresh. Matt kneels to feel the pulse, two fingers on the plump carotid and one on the shooter’s sternum. He can taste blood, thick and sour, in his mouth, on his clothes, on the floor. It seems to be everywhere and nowhere, maybe some is from a memory, maybe he is drowning in a thought. Matt’s chest starts to constrict, gasps, in and out, breaths broken. He thinks he is fine, he thinks they are all fine, but his brain won’t accept that notion, chooses to panic. His legs fold underneath him.

“Hey, hey man, are you ok?” The cashier is crunching his way over, sliding in his haste on shards of broken glass. He places an unsteady hand on Matt’s shoulder, pushing him down so he is sitting on the floor, then moves to the perp, still unconscious at their feet.

“He’s alive,” he confirms after a quick pat down, and something in Matt unclenches, echoes of ‘you killed him, you killed him’ indistinct in his ears.

His hands move to Matt, looking for tears in his jacket, around his legs. It’s only when he reaches Matt’s head that he seems to really look at him for the first time. His hands fall back to his sides.

“It’s you,” he says, and Matt is not sure who that is. He knows he should tell him to call the police, and high tail it out of here. He shakes his head.

“No, man, it is, it is you. You’re that guy, you’re daredevil!”

Now he really needs to go, before the guy has the sense to wrench the scarf off his face. He tries to lift off his legs, but his ribs are still contracting uselessly, and he almost falls forward. The man places a steadying hand on his arm.

“I knew it, I KNEW it, I knew you’d be back! I told her, you know, I told her,” Matt’s not sure who he told or what, but he knows that he doesn’t have time for this. He forces a meditative inhale through his throat, ignoring the clenching of his lungs and the throttling of his heart. He closes his eyes and counts to five before he lets it out. It’s not enough to get him upright, but it does make his arms stop tingling, scuttling fire ants under his skin.

“You alright? Hey! Hey!” the man is trying to hold Matt straight, one hand on each of his biceps. Except now he is definitely alarmed, his blood sour with lingering adrenaline, and reaching for his phone. Whoever he decides to call won’t be good news for Matt, and somehow, he makes that thought enough to pull him to his feet. He more stumbles than walks, almost doubled over by his wheezing breaths that are somehow too thick to move past his throat.

He gives the perp one last ounce of his attention, just to triple-check that he is out for the count and starts sweeping the floor for the gun. Broken glass shifts like coarse sand, but Matt still finds it quickly enough, the nozzle glowing white from residual heat. He pockets it and forces his spine to straighten, his legs to move. One step, two, he stumbles against a shelf, making more glass hit the floor and something wet splash all over his ankles. He keeps going, the man staring at him but busy on the phone, police or ambulance or both, Matt can’t tell, his lungs, his breaths, his blood, loud, louder, a storm and a hurricane.

He makes it out, but not too far. The second alley must be enough, it leads to another street, an empty corner behind a dumpster. It’s covered in snow, a couple of inches deep, Matt sinks his hands in it first, then melts, curls, head on the ground. The scarf comes off in one sharp tug, and stays there, in Matt’s hands, clenched under white knuckles. He spreads snow on his face, it melts in icy droplets that burn like fire, just like the air, freezing and humid and why won’t it sit, why won’t it stay in his lungs?

_He's alive, they are alive,_ he tries to tell himself. Out here the world tastes less like blood, the acidity on his tongue more part of a memory, but the way his fists ring, almost vibrate with such a familiar sensation, an ache that used to be his notion of justice and now he is not sure. He crossed to the other side and got welcomed back to the first. He can’t tell where he belongs anymore.

Matt presses his shuddering fingers deeper into the snow. A few flurries land on his skin, gentle as petals. The cold is pure agonizing pain. Matt hones in on it, on each nerve ending burning in protest, and uses that to find his arms, force them to flex, lift him up so that he can sit with his chest against the brick wall. The impact throws the last of the air out of his lungs, so they burn too, become tangible things amidst the million shades of black.

He makes the air something tangible too, something he can shape and control, fold inwards, let run down his throat. He follows the cold down, down, down, makes space for it by lifting his chest. He holds, holds, holds. Then out, ribs spasming from the effort.

_Again_ , he tells himself, the word layered in the voices of ghosts. Stick, his dad, Elektra, Father Lantom. _Again_ , they echo him.

He takes another breath, this time in through his nose, and stops mid-way when he smells it. The glass, the corks, dusty labels, fluorescent lights, fresh grapes and an assortment of aging cheeses in the fridge, an open packet of crackers somewhere nearby and him, him and her, her on him.

Thomas.

The man he just saved is Thomas.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I'm changing jobs next week. I hope it doesn't mean that my writing fics during work time dries up completely, but it might slow me down a little (you know, you have to pretend to be good, at least at the beginning). I'll do what I can guys!
> 
> Thanks for the lyrics goes to CaribMermaid for this chapter. It's strangely comforting to have the lyrics all lined up. It gives me a starting point for each chapter.
> 
> This chapter was a little happier? Right? I'm really sorry for the never-ending agony guys. I've been drawn into painful fics before, and I know what it feels like to want to stop reading and no being able to at the same time. Sometimes I just want to throttle a happy ending out of them. But you guys trust me, right? I have a plan. And not that many chapters left.
> 
> Do my thank yous for your continued support mean anything at this point? Am I wasting characters trying to explain? I never thought anyone would give much of a shit about my stories, and having you there...It's a lot like a dream come true. I'll be cherishing this experience for the rest of my life.


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hmmm where we we? Oh yes, Matt and Foggy reconcile and he accidentally saves Thomas from near-certain death on his way home.

_I just hope you see me in a little better light_

_Do you think it's easy being of the jealous kind?_

_'Cause I miss the shape of your lips_

_You'll win, it's just a trick_

_And this is it, so I'm sorry_

_~ **To be so lonely** by **Harry Styles**_

He makes it home, somehow. The journey back is blurred, footprints swiftly erased by falling snow, one step following the next, guided by the undiluted need to keep moving.

By the time he reaches his roof's door, singular beads of perspiration have gathered at his temples; the wind there is more piercing, as if it can stab right through his skull. The air in his lungs continues to blaze like it’s mostly fire, each breath made of smoke, clogging his arteries with soot. Matt’s hands fumble with the handle of a door he should really learn to keep locked, his fingers swollen, stiff, his bandages stained. He needs to throw his shoulder against it to coerce it to open when his grip refuses to tighten.

His flat welcomes him with the emptiness of artificially heated air, mostly flavored like burnt dust motes and old nickel pipes, the smell sticking to the trapped moisture on the surface of his skin. Lone snowflakes flurry in behind him, following a choked-off gust of wind. They melt to rain on their way to the floor, enticing other scents to merge with their own, some from the outside, some from the inside. And so the stain on his wall finds him once more, tannins now lost in the grittiness of clay, but her, still right there, a name for the constant ache in his chest. And him, of course, now all over his hands, all over his conscience.

What has he done?

His hands shake, struggle to contain the remnants of a violence he never let himself acknowledge before. The bandages are tarnished by his contact with Thomas, his nerves fraught, angry at his instincts to meddle, even when he knows, he _knows_ it was the right thing to do. And yet.

It's not that he would wish ill to Thomas, to Karen, no. It's how his good deed refuses to settle straight in the pit of his stomach, making Matt shift and stretch, roll his shoulders, arch his neck. Like he can dissect the guilt out of his guts, cut out the anger. This time his relief is loaded, heavier, wrong.

His last step is one too many, drags Matt down like gravity has shifted, intensified on the spot. It entices Matt with the prospect of an uncomfortable rest perched with his head against the wall, maybe a wink or two of sleep. Matt drags himself over to the couch instead, still unable to untangle the defeated hope from the taught sheets on his bed. His thighs cramp the second he loosens, his calves throb, adrenaline now in fumes and his upper body a pulsing ache, lactic acid building in the folds in stripes of mold, toxic. The physical pain laps at Matt’s consciousness, sharp or hazy, changing with each ripple.

The night is well on its way to dawn when Matt closes his eyes. The city he couldn’t save rubs against his sanity with one more scream, one more scar. His phone rings, and he must be dreaming, because he knows it really lies in tatters, scattered across his floor. But when he picks up, when he presses the received to his face, he finds himself hoping it’s her.

*

"Rise and shine sunshin-oh."

Matt goes from deep sleep to fully awake and standing in less time than it takes for his brain to acknowledge the shift in gravity. His feet slap onto the floor but don't stick, causing him to lurch back and slam one-sided into his living room wall.

Foggy's pulse throbs at his temples in short steady waves that do nothing to clear the disorientation. His smell saturates the lining on Matt’s tongue, thick and fuzzy. Matt swallows heavily to try and disperse some of the noise, needing to measure the room and not just taste Foggy's past few meals (doughnuts for breakfast, chewed hastily and while walking outside, the oils from last night’s Chinese still fragrant enough to disperse other evidence). He manages to right himself before the turmoil of ins and outs has thinned to a more manageable see-through mist, and realizes that Foggy is talking to him.

"W-what?" he stammers, his tongue stiff with sleep and still partially glued to the roof of his mouth.

"Your face Matt. What happened to you face."

Matt moves his hand to his cheek and is surprised to find a damp stretch of skin. He presses the swelling, follows the tenderness, and the sharp sting is accompanied by the smell of gunpowder and ammunition, of fire - the bullet that grazed him when he was trying to save Thomas the night before. The cut he forgot to care about in his exhausted and panicky state, lost in his half crawl home once he was able to restart his lungs. Fresh blood quickly seeps out to cover his wondering fingers, enough to confirm that he is likely going to need stitches.

"Matt?" Foggy's voice is carefully non-threatening, each of his moves calculated, deliberately slow.

"Thomas. I...Thomas..." Matt starts, needing to explain, needing Foggy to stop treating him like he is about to bolt because it’s making Matt's senses spiral into danger mode. His muscles tense, skittish, wild, his senses roam of their own volition, in and out of crevices, through floors and buildings.

"Thomas? What...OhmyGod you killed Thomas?!" Foggy screeches, dropping a paper-bag that thumps to the floor (fat raspberry-jam filled donuts, now flattened on the side with two leaking most of their filling into the napkins). Thankfully Matt's fretful headshaking is sufficient to save the takeout coffees that are about to meet the same fate.

"F-fogs no, there was a robbery, there were shots, I.."

"You got shot?!" The coffees tilt precariously in Foggy's outraged arms.

"Grazed," Matt lifts his hand to his face once more, slips his index through the cut, finds too much of it sinks in, finds he can't ignore it now that he's realized it's there.

He moves to take the coffees out of Foggy’s hands, placing them carefully down on the table before his carpet can haunt him with the smell of another fight.

"I heard it while I was walking home, the guy wanted money, he was about to shoot. I had to do something."

"You said you were going to take a cab home."

Foggy is using his lawyering tone, relaying the evidence for the jury. Matt tries to match him breath for breath, steadies his voice.

"I did, but I was...I just wanted to clear my head."

"So you walked head-first into a robbery."

"I wasn't planning it Foggy, I had to...I couldn't..."

"I thought you said you were taking a break from all this."

"I am. I was...” frustration bubbles up, crackles on the tips of Matt’s overwrought nerves, “what did you want me to do? Just stand-by and let it happen?"

"I don't know... call the police, like a normal person? No offence, buddy, but you are not the only option out there. It's not 'let someone get shot or kick their butts myself'! There's the third, preferred option - I like to call it: 'let the police do their job'?"

"They would've been too late Foggy."

"You don't know that. What if they would've been just fine? What if that bullet had hit a little more to the left, and I would've woken up to find my best friend, who by the way told me he was going to take a cab home, with his brains smeared on the side of his face?"

"And what if they had been too late instead, huh, Foggy? Would you be able to live with yourself if you knew you had the power to save someone and you didn't, just because there was a slight chance that you might get hurt in the process?"

"We can't keep doing this Matt. I can't keep worrying that every night will be the night that will leave you broken, or injured or dead. You haven't even recovered from your last bout of justice, and here you are, back at it-"

"-I'm not back at it."

"- with no concern to how it will affect the people that care about you-"

"-Foggy, I did what had to be done."

"It's not all on you! What happens to this city is on all of us, because of all of us. You cannot keep blaming yourself for every corrupt delusional mind, for every bout of passionate rage, for every grazed knee!"

It’s like a vortex, a tornado, always lingering after the full stop of each of their sentences, waiting to suck them back into the same old argument, an impasse that is as solid as a concrete wall. Matt’s tired of living on the same side of the fence, of hoping that the storm will pass him and leave him unscathed.

"It was Thomas," he says quietly, "the man I saved. The man that was one move away from getting shot. It was Thomas."

Foggy makes a sound that Matt can only describe as air being quickly sucked into a black hole.

"Karen's Thomas?" he asks, staggered.

Matt nods and sinks back into the couch. Foggy stands there, stammering wordlessly, then collapses stiffly into the seat next to him.

"Well...shit," he says.

"Yeah," agrees Matt.

“I…sorry,” Foggy says, “for shouting…I shouldn’t have…drawn conclusions.”

They settle a little in his apology but it’s still...too loud. After so much time stuck in his own head Foggy is just...so much. His heart, his pulse, his lungs, his stomach, his everything - muscles tensing, organs pumping, liquids trickling, dripping, oozing...Each little noise is one of a thousand buzzing bees, knocking into each other in the confines of Matt's head. But it's more than that, its vibrations nudging his skin, it's shifts of cooler and warmer air currents swirling in little black voids, little cyclones that suck the dimensions out of a piece of the room around him. It's sensory detail that can't be processed, it's information in the wrong language, it's blindness. It's too much. Matt wrings his fingers in his hair, once, twice, while the injustice of it all rises with his temper.

“So what, Foggy. It’s ok because it was Thomas? Does who I save matter that much? Isn’t it enough that everyone is somebody’s Thomas? Is one life more important than another?”

“No, of course not, Matt, I never said that.”

“You didn’t have to,” Matt stands and his head spins, probably from dehydration based on his dusty lips. He doesn’t care enough to do something about it but is still not fast enough when he tries to step away.

“No, wait, wait. Just…sit down a second. Please,” Foggy grips his fingers, gently, and tugs. Matt could free himself from his grasp if he wanted to, could walk out of this room and this conversation. Another Matt might have, a prouder Matt. A Matt that knew where his home was. But this Matt is tired and Foggy’s heart... well, looming migraine or not, it mostly still just sounds like home.

Foggy waits for Matt to sit down next to him before he speaks: “I’m not good at this. I haven’t been good at this…this whole…Daredevil thing. And for the most part, I still think that you should’ve told me about it sooner. Before even…I…”

“I couldn’t Foggy. How do you admit something like that to someone? I couldn’t even tell my dad!”

“I know, Matt. And I know I said we could find a way to move forwards. But you’ve got to see it from my perspective, I…it feels like I don’t know you at all. Sure, when you’re Matt, just Matt, it’s almost like the old times. But now I wonder if…if maybe the real you is the other guy and this life it’s just all…an act.”

The humidity in the room peaks, strangling Matt’s tentative question, “what if they are both me?”

Foggy wipes his cheek with the hem of his coat, staring resolutely ahead of him.

“Daredevil scares me,” he admits, covering the surprised jump of his heart with a shrug.

A new crack splinters something vital in Matt’s chest, “I would never hurt you Foggy.”

“No, not like that. I’m scared of what Daredevil means…that there’s this whole other guy hidden inside my best friend. This kung-fu trained ninja that takes over his body when I just assume he goes to sleep! A guy that could get him killed and I can’t…no matter how many people Daredevil saves I will never…I wish we could make a different trade, you know? My best friend for a stranger’s life? It will never feel like it was worth the deal.”

Matt doesn’t know what to say to that, long past the pinky promises and cross his heart. He cannot guarantee his safety no more than he can control that of others.

“Is it selfish to want my friend to be safe?” Foggy asks, finally turning towards him, "I lost you once buddy and I can't..."

Matt halts whatever Foggy is about to say by reaching out for him. He can’t wrap his arms around him comfortably from that angle and is worried about bloodying his lawyer clothes (shirt buttons, a tie and the distinct smell of paperwork tell Matt all he needs to know), but still they hug like old friends, hoping this is what they are working towards.

"Oh now, don't get any ideas," Matt jokes when Foggy drowns his forehead in his neck.

"Ugh, as if I would even consider making my move with your face looking like that."

"That bad, huh?"

"Worse. You remember that time I was playing with our leftover Halloween fake blood, and the lid exploded, and I got it all over my face, and that girl fainted when she bumped into me on my way to the showers down the hall?"

"Yeah," how could he not? Foggy spent the next month smelling of nothing the chemicals.

"Your face looks worse than _that_."

“Well, then I guess it's a good thing you watched those YouTube tutorials on first aid.”

The ensuing fireworks that explode from Foggy's pores are enough to make Matt wish he hadn’t shattered his phone so that he could run to Claire instead.

*

Foggy is trying, Matt will give him that. He gags and swallows heavily as he places a third Steri Strip neatly on Matt’s face, and Matt can taste exactly how close he is to vomiting for the second time in the space of thirty minutes (the first being after the cut ejected a semi-congealed clot of blood straight into his hands when he tried to hold it closed with his fingers).

"This is great Fogs," he tells him when Foggy presses the last strip down ever so gently, a little like he is handling the wires of an explosive.

"It's a good thing you are blind man because -" Foggy gags again and clamps a fist over his mouth, then swears in a language Matt has never heard "all set," he croaks.

"Was that punjabi or were you trying your hand at Spanish again?" Matt moves to the sink to wash his face as best as he can, careful not to ruin Foggy’s hard work.

"Had to put those lessons to good use!"

Matt smiles a little when he hears Foggy take shaky controlled breaths with his forehead pressed against his windowpane.

"I brought you some work," he calls from the other room, "something easy to get you back in the swing of things."

"Thanks," Matt wonders about the things Foggy is leaving unsaid. Mostly about the third part of their brand new office sign that neither of them dares to mention. Does she know that he is hoping to return? Will she be willing to work with him again? To breathe in the same room as him?

"I thought you could give me a call once you familiarized yourself with the case, we could brainstorm next steps?"

Give _me_ a call, not us. Sure, Karen is usually mostly busy with her PI work but Matt still feels her absence in this temporary arrangement.

"Sounds great, except I dropped my phone and..." Matt gestures to the wall.

"Hm," mutters Foggy after surveying the scene quietly for a few seconds, "was that before or after you threw what looks to be quite a respectable bottle of wine against the wall?"

Matt shrugs, heading towards Foggy's bag where quite a hefty bundle of papers is waiting for him, judging by how compact the mass is.

"You planning to buy a new one?"

"A new what?" Matt trails his fingers over the first page, then adjusts the document so that it is the right side up.

"A phone, Matt."

"Eventually," he concedes. Truth is the thought of his meagre leftover funds kickstart a new round of worry that has a panicky quality to it, so Matt tries not to think about them at all. He figures he can do without a phone for now, particularly as the one person he's actually craving to talk to never wants to speak to him again. Plus he can't stare at the remnants of his phone and will _them_ to ring. 

"Right, I'm going to get you a new phone."

"Foggy you don't need to."

"I do need to, Matt. You can't be a lawyer and not be reachable. Or a vigilante for that matter. I won't make it till the end of the week if I can't call you to check that you are still breathing."

"I'm not planning to go anywhere, you know that, right?"

"Doesn't matter. You need a phone. Modern society doesn't function without it." 

Matt's about to argue but Foggy's stomach becomes more turbulent every time he glances his way, and Matt suspects that maybe Foggy is just looking for a more subtle way to get some air. So he nods, taking the papers to his little table, and waves Foggy out with a 'thanks man!'. 

*

The Steri Strips are itchy. Glue creates filaments that never pull in unison. No. Each is the proud owner of its own little needle of pain, yanking its own piece of Matt's skin. He feels each of the small hairs that are coming away, the sting extra searing in the final pop, like they are fighting harder to hold on.

It makes Matt restless, fidgety. His hands move of their own volition, play with each other, create senseless patterns. His tongue finds the center of his lips, sucking out more and more moisture from his winter-chapped lips, creating another slow burn that is only appeased for the few seconds that the condensation takes to evaporate once again. His right leg stops and starts, knee jerking up and toes pushing down.

He knows the Steri Strips will do the job, and that asking his nurses for help stitching his face will only bring questions he doesn't want to answer (questions that if he is honest, he doesn't dare think of himself). He knows stitching his own face might leave one too many scars that for once will not be so easily concealed. And entrusting Foggy with a needle would probably end up with both of them over the toilet bowl. But still he can't bring himself to trail his fingers along the bumps of the papers in front of him, the minute discomfort of anything other than perfectly smooth and soft against his skin the one stimulation too many, one that will definitely shatter the precarious equilibrium that he has been trying to survive in.

And so Matt convinces himself that a little meditation might just do the trick, and why not do it cross-legged on the couch this time. He sinks into controlled breaths, feeling the weight of his body with a new vigor, so much so that his eyelids are too heavy to keep open, and so he lets them close.

Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe....

*

There's buzzing in his bones. The bees have turned to wasps and they are back with a vengeance, nesting, burrowing, stinging. Matt is slowly vibrating out of his own skin, the whole world is shaking with him and the closer he comes to consciousness, the more the vibration is accompanied by spinning, rotating, flipping upside-down. He is going to be sick.

He slowly opens his eyes, unpeeling one eyelid at the time, then moves lower, to close his mouth, but doesn't chance a further movement, too afraid to even unstick his cheek from where it is glued to the pillow. He straightens his hand instead, looking for the stability of a flat surface to trick his brain into allowing him to step off the sensory roller coaster. And that's when he feels it, the vibration coming straight from under the heel of his palm, muted by a layer of fabric, against the back of the couch. Foggy’s phone must have fallen out of his pocket while they were talking on the couch.

He pulls it out clumsily, searching the sides for the correct button to shut it down before he lugs it out of the window.

"Foggy, where the hell have you been?! I've had client coming in and out of the office, you missed her deposition and Matt is not answering his phone!"

Matt’s heart stops, drops, then picks up at double speed.

"K-Karen?" he croaks.

There is a long stretch of silence on the other end. Matt worries he might have accidentally cut the call when -

"Matt?"

"Hi." 

_Hi? HI?_ _WHO SAYS HI?!_

"What the..." she starts, her voice gradually building to a yell, "you know what. No. No. I'm not ready to talk to you."

“Oh,” Matt doesn’t know what to say beyond that, and the silence crackles and pops like a wood fire. Matt thinks he can hear her exhales, even if faintly. Karen seems to be alternating between taking deep breaths and not breathing at all.

"Fuck. Was it...you?"

Matt doesn’t need to ask what she is talking about.

"Yeah."

"A-are you ok?"

"Yeah..."

She seems to digest that for a second.

"He said there were gunshots, that you collapsed and disappeared before he could-"

"-I'm fine Karen."

If she’s calling out of some leftover sense of pity, Matt thinks she should just hang up. Then he remembers she never meant to call him in the first place. His fingers hover on the sides of the phone, probing for the button that could end this conversation, wondering if he’d be willing to press it.

"Did you know...? That it was...did you recognize him?"

Her voice is splintering slightly, leaching emotions that she is trying hard to repress. Matt has to focus to tear his senses away from the pattern of her breathing to answer.

"No...I. After I figured it out. It was..." He falters.

"I thought you were done with the whole Daredevil thing," she accuses, a little more usual her.

"Yeah..I,” he has no excuse, nothing, “yeah me too."

Another silence. Matt closes his eyes and represses a groan. Of all the conversations he hoped to have, of all the reconciliations he dreamt of in the past few days this…this is another step back.

"You know this changes nothing," she warns, as if he’d assume a few mumbled monosyllables and an accidental good deed could redeem his soul.

"I know," he says, then bites his tongue hard not to scream.

"But I,” Karen inhales firmly, “I'm glad Daredevil was there. It...it would be a shame if that’s the last we saw of him."

With that the line goes dead, dragging something within Matt along with it.

In the silence that follows, in the emptiness around him, Matt answers the only voice that is left. He stands quickly, moves confidently to slip his fingers in the coarse fabric to find the key. The lock springs open, the chest unfolds, and with it, the devil is set free.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First of all, credit for the song lyrics go to DDMM - I'm not sure if you are still reading this, but if you are, thank you!
> 
> I'm not sure if it's me, or the world is genuinely in a much deeper state of gloom this month, or maybe it's just the endless COVID, but I hope that you are being kind to yourself and are staying safe and looking after each other. Kindness and hope is all we have left, let's use both abundantly. 
> 
> I don't seem to be able to put Matt and Foggy in the same room without making them argue. I hope it's not too angsty because each compromise is one step forward for them (I will make them say it all, screw you canon, these two shall be besties if I say so). I'm also very sorry it took so long to get here. I live in this constant fear of falling into writer's block again, so am writing a couple of lines each day and emailing it to myself...which is probably counterproductive seeing it took me over a week to sort them into a chapter! But we are nearing the end guys, soon you'll be free to never ever EVER read anything angsty again :)
> 
> I know I have been terrible at responding to your comments this round (like REALLY BAD), but please know that they've kept me going these past few weeks, and it's not for lack of appreciation (more a combination of lack of time/lack of laptop). To those of you who have stuck with this story till here, silent readers or not, thank you. You truly are the highlight of my year.


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hmmm. Where were we? After another argument with Foggy and a still refusing to talk to him Karen, Matt resorts to running away in the devil.

_And the lights, they glow_

_Like I've just lost the World War_

_And the scene slips away_

_To the evenness I fake_

_It's a shit old world_

_Cause I don't really want you, girl_

_But you can't be free_

_Cause I'm selfish, I'm obscene  
_

_~ **Genghis Khan** by **Miike Snow**_

Pulling on the layers of black while keeping his lungs working turns out not to be so difficult if Matt channels the fury into movement. The momentum guides him out of his door and into the late afternoon nightfall, a moving shadow.

He relies on instincts as much as he can, the single wayward hint of intention that slips in as a thought enough to force him to stop to wheeze through the next five minutes. He needs to put his bare fingertips against his forehead to regain a sense of reality and set off again. Eventually, the burn in his lungs matches the one in his muscles and the fury just burns everything hotter. He turns into a flame, purposeful, unstoppable.

He's not sure how to find him, but eventually he does, the unique rhythm of that heart rooted in his memory, shockingly clear. He finds him as easily as he would Foggy or Karen. 

He sits unnoticed behind the windowpane, knowing it could so easily have been a grave stone. He listens to the screeching beep, reassurance of a beating heart. Bones still grind with every breath, held together by sheets of metal and screws. Tubes run in and out, busy like highways on a Friday evening. There’s wilting flowers in a vase, a home-made card that Matt can’t read. It smells like crayons and cheerios. The man sleeps on unaware, perched on the fringe of life. He’s not awake. He may never be.

“I’m sorry,” Matt whispers through the glass. His words become a little cloud of steam, linger for a moment. Tears freeze in trails of ice down his cheeks, a jarring contrast to the trapped heat of the fabric on his face. They are only salt by the time Matt reaches home.

*

He knows he is not alone before he lands on his rooftop. Foggy’s presence lends a warmer quality to the air, one that almost glows like a lantern through Matt’s senses. He doesn’t hesitate to walk inside, pulling the cowl off his face as he makes his way down his stairs.

"I brought food," Foggy's voice comes from somewhere in his kitchen.

"Thanks," Matt zones in to listen to the words that are unspoken.

"I'm afraid it's cold now," a pulse recently settled, picking-up with each of Matt's strides. Footsteps all over his kitchen and living room. A quick peek in his bedroom to check if he was there. One of his beers, half-finished on the counter. Foggy's phone, back in his pocket, still warm from the contact with his skin.

"That's ok," Matt says carefully, stopping by his dining table.

"I found your old sim card on the floor. It was a little sticky with old wine so I had to wash it, but it should work fine. We can go through the instructions of your new phone together. I tried to get a model similar to your old one but -"

Foggy wears his worry as a mixture of stale sweat and deodorant and shampoo, his stomach clenching and knotting in random patterns. Matt listens to the words that are pouring out of Foggy's mouth just to fill the silence, meaningless answers to the questions that he can't bring himself to ask.

"-Foggy."

"Just tell me Matt, do I need to be worried. I mean, fuck. More worried."

Matt plays with the hem of the cowl in his hands, carefully looking for a way to explain. He lifts his arm, "right over there, behind that building, a little boy called Jacob is reading with a flashlight under his bed. He likes to stay there when it goes dark because it's the only place he feels safe. His mum is single and the most pathetic gold digger. She is too busy going on her expensive dates to care about him. And sure, she leaves food in the fridge, and the kid has learned how to shower by now but...sometimes he reads the comics out loud, tells himself to be brave like his favorite heroes. And then there," Matt spins on the spot, "just two streets down, lives Ivonne. Every night she prays that she'll make it through the month. She doesn't have papers and the other day she got fired from her job," Matt turns again, points, "And then there, behind that alley? The other night a woman got mugged and...I couldn't…I can still smell her blood on the street."

Foggy is silent. The air seems to be thinning in his lungs. Matt knows he is looking at him, he can feel it, his eyes scouring his face, his hands, his arms, his chest, looking, looking. It's one of those things that Matt can't see, looks, one of those things he always senses, like an itch, faintly creeping across his flesh.

Matt ducks his head, "two floors down lives Monica. Her husband is cheating on her with a woman that wears too much perfume. She knows about it but she hasn't had a job since the kids and is too afraid to make a move. Sometimes she cries in the shower, when she thinks no one can hear."

"Matt?"

"Two building across to your right, there's an old man. I never found out his name because no one ever says it. He's been alone all this time and there's some days that his arthritis is so bad that I can hear his joints ache all the way from here. He's never once asked for help."

"Matt."

"Right now there's a young guy breaking into a car five streets away. He is calm, focused, confident," Matt cocks his head, "it's not his first time. And somewhere there,” Matt points behind Foggy’s right shoulder, “there's a man waiting by the mouth of an alley. He has a gun in the inside pocket of his jacket, an extra pack of bullet on the other side. He keeps scratching at the trigger, trying to seem cool but he..." Matt licks his lips, "he is nervous."

"Matt," Foggy repeats gently.

"I hear them, Foggy. I want to...I hear them cry and I can't..."

Foggy takes a step forward and Matt can't bear it, the softness, the false sense of safety that emanates from the familiarity of his pulse. He puts a hand up to stop him, stall him, shifts his feet back.

"I know there is nothing I can do for most of them...not as Matt, not as Daredevil. I can't save them all. But I...h-hear it all, Foggy. There are consequences to all my actions, selfish or not."

"It's not all on you," hesitant, pleadingly. Solace that claws through Matt, straight into his chest. He shakes his head to disperse some of it, his shoulders hunched under the firm weight of his guilt.

"Every time I take a break, this city suffers, and I'm forced to listen to it. Listen to innocent people call for help and know, deep down, that I am the only one that can hear them and that I c-choose to do nothing."

Matt hones in on the sound of Foggy's heart like he is clinging to his last shelter in a storm. He feels a little like he is choking, treacherous tears dripping, salty, down the back of his throat. And still when he opens his mouth he finds more words waiting to be set free.

"Ever since...I can't seem to...it's like it happens all over again every time I want to help. My hands...I haven't been able to go out as Daredevil. There have been moments where I shut it all out, where I was stuck inside my own head. But other times I was their only hope and I...couldn't."

"What did you do tonight, Matt?" Whispered, fearful. The question Foggy had been holding on to, frightened of what its answer might mean.

"I went to see the man I almost killed. I was hoping I could understand. I don't..." Matt moves the cowl in his hands again, breathing hard, finds that he is shuddering, "I don't know who I am anymore."

With that a damn breaks, shudders turn to hiccups, Matt's face is suddenly drenched. His knees want to crumple under him, spent, and Matt tries to suck in a breath that doesn't feel like drowning. Foggy finally moves, takes four steady steps until he is right in front of him, takes Matt firmly by the shoulders.

"Matt breathe," Foggy sounds so sure, so solid, Matt tries, "just breathe."

"Now Matt I need you to listen to me. No," he says when Matt's head turns away, "use those bat ears of yours and focus on me, ok? Listen to me Matt. Are you with me?"

Matt bites his lip, fights the surging instincts to flee. He is caged in a concrete wall of Foggy, sounds and smells and touch, in and around him. He knows they could quell the restlessness of his foraging senses if he let them. The thought of surrendering to this safety is foreign and unwelcome, yet addictive in its promise. Matt continues to shudder under Foggy's grip, swallows more air, steadies his legs. Then he nods, once.

"You are Matt Murdock. You are my best friend and a damn good lawyer. You are the man who will die without a second thought if it means he gets to make anybody else's life just that little bit better. No, Matt, listen to me. You are the most stubborn devout Catholic boy I have ever met. But you are also the best person I know. You will sacrifice everything for others, everything. You absolutely suck at asking for help, don't shake your head, you know it's true. You are annoyingly charming, particularly with the ladies, I mean it man, leave some for the rest of us. And yet you continue to be alone, because you are convinced that you are not good enough, so listen to me, Matt, no. Listen to me. You deserve happiness. You deserve love. You deserve this life that you built for yourself, even if it involves shitty drinks at Josie's and cases paid in pie and arguably questionable friends. Now listen close, because I knew your ass when you were just a scrawny little lawyer wannabe at Columbia, and my man, there may be things I don't know about you, things you may never want me to know, but this, this right here, is something that I know in my bones: Matt, Matty, you are not a murderer. No, Matt, listen to me, you will never be a murderer. I don't care if you are possessed by the Lucifer, Satan or his whole team of demons, you, Matt, you, all of you, are a good person."

Matt's shaking has intensified, condensed, turned into head-to-foot trembling. Foggy's words wash over him, warm, safe, freeing. Matt wants so hard to believe them, but most bounce of his skin, tumble out of his ears, spill all over the floor like ashes from coal. And still Foggy holds him up, his fingers almost painful in their fierceness, their heat searing, grounding. 

"I tried to kill him Foggy."

"You did. And it's not the first time that you think you wanted someone to die. No, listen to me. What matters is that you didn't. Not with Fisk, not with this idiot. And both times, believe it or not, it's because you chose not to. Matt, listen to me. You stopped yourself. Because you are not a murderer." 

He waits until Matt nods again, fighting the turmoil inside and out.

"You are allowed to make mistakes," he continues, gentle but firm, "we all are. But you don't have to make them define who you are. The person you are is who you want to be. Ok?"

"Ok," Matt croaks, telling himself more than Foggy.

"Now go wash your face, I'll heat up the food. You are going to eat and then you are going to sleep and tomorrow we are going to the office together," Foggy pauses when Matt stiffens in his arms, "let me deal with Karen."

Matt's too exhausted to argue, so he tries to head to the bathroom, but Foggy is not done with him, "One more thing, Matt. Everything else, the suffering of this city, what you think you should and shouldn't be doing. We will find a way to help, ok? Together. This is my city too."

*

Foggy spends the night, stealing Matt's couch and forcing Matt to finally use his clean sheets. Matt searches for Foggy's void, for the blank familiarity that is his sleeping form, and finds that he can rest in its fairytale safety.

*

He needs help with his tie in the morning, and Foggy finds a pair of old woolen gloves to hide the stained bandages on Matt's hands. There's not much that can be done for his face, except trying to outdo each other in making up the most implausible excuses to explain the injury. Matt spends the walk to the office with his hand on Foggy's elbow and his heart in his throat, forcing out laughs that end the moment they leave his lips.

His worry is needless. Karen takes one look at them and drags Foggy back out of the door, two streets down and into an alley, effectively drowning Matt in an argument that he can totally hear. She agrees she can be civil, keep it professional, after Foggy reassures her that they do not have to interact if they don't want to. Matt pretends to be engrossed in his screen reader when they walk back into the room. He thinks the blush in his face might give away the way his heart is pounding harder than hers.

The first day passes in a turmoil of clients that rapidly become more concerned with Matt's health than their own cases. Matt smiles his most charming smile while dishing out helpless reassurances and gets a headache within the hour from all the perfumes encrusted in his collar leftover from the awkward hugs. Karen ices him out in posture and behavior, purposefully turned away from him. Even Foggy knows it's too soon for banter, and so the first day slips away, silently.

That night, Foggy hangs around his apartment. He is the first to unlock the chest when he sees Matt get fidgety. He makes Matt tell him what he hears, and then hands him the clothes, helps him fit black gloves over his knuckles. He tells him to be safe when he unlocks the roof's door. He tells him he'll be here, to come straight back. And when Matt does, he is.

Matt fights with his elbows, his knees, his feet, his wrists, to spare his healing hands. He fights with his head when the panic threatens to fill him. He fights in small increments, quick efficient bouts. Less urgent crimes are called in calmly and efficiently by Foggy. Matt collects a few bruises and is not fast enough to spare a hairline fracture to his rib. Foggy ices it wordlessly while placing another anonymous call, for an ongoing robbery this time. If he is getting tired, he never lets it on. Their arrangement is less than practical, having to go back and forth from his roof, but it makes everything more manageable, gives Matt a second to breathe. And so they skim the worst off the top, and the city lives on to see another day.

Day two Matt tries to be more civil. He drops a takeout coffee on Foggy’s desk (two shots of espresso, three sugars, double cream and a splash of hazelnut syrup), then places a frothy cappuccino on the edge of Karen’s. He tries to say ‘good morning’ but the words die on their way out, and Matt has to swallow heavily to drown a croak in its tracks. He nods at her instead, then walks away when she stares resolutely ahead. The coffee goes untouched. Matt throws it in the bin on his way out.

That night he takes heed in Foggy’s strategy, but forces Foggy to head home. Even with his blindness he can sense the tiredness in Foggy’s drooping frame. He promises he will text when he gets home safe, that he will leave what he can to the cops. And he does, for the most part. Instincts cost him a re-broken knuckle. He falls asleep with an icepack on his hand.

The third and fourth day blur into one. Matt doesn’t get much sleep, and it is partly due to work. He thinks he manages a tentative ‘hi’ that Karen ignores, but he is too tired to tell if he is just dreaming. When Matt gets home that night, he finds Jessica Jones outside his building. She gives him a passing nod and walks away. Matt texts Foggy accusingly but he doesn’t reply. He goes to bed knowing his city will be safe for one night.

Eventually, things change, or maybe that's him. Time flies and then slows, starts to mean something again. Matt settles back into his life, adjusts to the furtive worried glances Foggy throws his way, learns to view Karen as an extension of the office rather than as a person. Laughter comes slower, feels scratchy at first. It’s a long time before the smile on his face starts to mirror what’s inside. Foggy still drops by every couple of days with some take-out and a random excuse. Matt eats, and works and lets the devil out at night. The storm inside him settles to a light drizzle. Sometimes lighting still cracks him in two. Matt finds a way out of bed each morning and a way back into it every night. It’s ok. Life’s ok. Matt’s...ok.

*

As much as Matt would give to have his sight back, he has to admit that there are times when sight truly is overrated. Like in moments like these, where sighted or not, he can feel Karen shooting daggers at Foggy with her eyes. It makes Matt almost glad he is blind as he tries not to cower away from the waves of her unbridled rage.

"Karen," Foggy pleads reasonably, "I can't go with him, I have three cases to prep for and court tomorrow."

"I can go alone," Matt peeps helpfully.

He almost recoils from the heat of her fury at the sound of his voice.

"Just go with him, please, Karen?" Foggy insists.

"He doesn't need me," she grits out, like he isn't standing in the same room as them.

"I don't," Matt confirms. He doesn't. Although it wouldn't hurt his blind lawyer façade. And he must admit that the prospect of spending a few hours with her, as terrifying as that may be, makes his stomach squirm with a mix of fear and longing. He genuinely can't decide what outcome he'd like best.

"Please, Karen. For the firm."

It's a low blow and they all know it. Matt waits for Foggy's winning argument to take effect. Five minutes later Matt and Karen are squished on opposite sides of a cab's back seat, the boundaries of her personal space so clear that it's as if she has drawn them in the air between them.

*

Matt's not sure why Foggy insisted she come with him. They all know he can cope on his own. It may be that it's his first time in court in a while. Maybe Foggy is still worried about the fragility of his mental state. Or maybe he is fed up of being the messenger for two-thirds of his office and is hoping that a few hours in a semi-confined space will force them to speak to each other. Matt suspects the third option is likely the most true, and that for once Foggy's wishful thinking may end up being just that, a wish.

Karen's behavior is...unreproachable. She guides his hands to the elevator buttons when she finds them searching the wall, warns him about steps and obstacles before they reach them. Each change in direction is narrated in a soft, neutral voice. She moves out of the way when he has to find his way to the jury and helps him find his chair on his way back.

It's easy, familiar gestures. Flashes of physical contact that are necessary more than gifted. No matter what is going on between them, Karen has never been one to punish him through his disability. Matt's not sure why this time her help makes him feel so hollow. 

* 

It's early evening by the time they are done. They stand under the eve by the courtroom steps, listening to the curtain of rain crash around them. The floor is already layered with a shallow pool of water, drips splattering on Matt's feet and bouncing off the polish on his shoes. Karen is wearing a thick woolen dress that ends somewhere near her knees. Her tights don't offer much protection against the winter cold, and goosebumps are erupting rapidly even as she clenches her thighs together, trying to retain some warmth.

"I'll help you hail a cab," she says eventually. It's the first full sentence she has said to him all day. Or maybe all month.

"No, I..." he really can't afford a cab right now, "I'll walk, it'll be fine."

"Do you have an umbrella?"

"Don't need one," he smiles as confidently as he can, hoping to trick her in assuming that he knows some secret shortcut that doesn't really exist.

He'll get drenched, and after their endless silence this afternoon, he feels like the cold has seeped into his bones. He is not looking forward to it getting even worse.

"Here, take mine," she efficiently rummages through her purse, "I'll get a cab."

Their fingertips brush slightly when she places the folded umbrella in his palm. The contact zings like an electric shock. She bounces back, he freezes. 

"I could walk you home," he blurts out. It's like his lips have moved of their own volition, he is just as shocked by his outburst as she seems to be.

"We can share it," he continues quickly, before she has a chance to inevitably turn him down, "I'll make sure you get home safe and sound and then borrow it to get back to mine." 

"I'm not yours to pr-"

"-I never said you were," he confirms quickly, "it's just a walk. We can both get home dry. We don't even have to talk at all. You can use the time to throw every insult you want my way."

She scoffs, "I live too close for that."

"Well then, maybe you should start now."

He folds his cane and leaves it in his pocket. She lets him fiddle with the umbrella, trail his fingers along the metal to unfold it, then search for the clasp in the folder polyester. Once it's open, he holds it in his right hand, tentatively extending his fingers towards her elbow with his left. She doesn't move for a few seconds, and each is filled with Matt's heart bumping hyperactively against his ribs. He is careful to hold onto her as lightly as possible when she eventually allows him to make contact, keeping a firm distance between them while holding most of the umbrella above her. His right side gets drenched within a few steps and he counts the drops that fall from his elbow to fill the charged silence between them.

One block, two. Her anger shifts and morphs, shapeless, iron-hot. She marches by his side, ramrod straight and stiff, reminding Matt of soldiers in a parade. 

"If this is your way to apologize, I don't want to hear it," she tells him finally. Matt's not sure if she means it, or if this _is_ his way to say anything. Her pulse runs rabbit-quick under then thin skin of her exposed neck, unreadable. 

"Oh well in that case..." Matt stops in his tracks and closes the umbrella in one swift move. Icy drops shower down on them and Karen gasps from the shock of cold or indignation or both when they first hit her skin.

He only keeps up the charade for a couple of seconds, quickly grinning and sheltering them both before more than a handful of drops have caught them in their game.

"Ha. Ha. So funny," she clearly doesn't think he is, but Matt doesn't really mind, not when she is the first to replace his hand on her elbow. Her shoulders soften subconsciously, a little more comfortable next to him. 

"If I get sick-" she starts.

"-I'm sure I'll have to answer to Thomas," Matt finishes for her with a tentative smile. He can't tell what her expression is like, can only hurt when she still won't look his way.

"How...how is he?" He asks, uncomfortable with the silence.

"Please, don't act like you care."

"I care how you are. So by extension, I care about Thomas too."

Her fury surges again, heart pumping more firmly. Matt notices that her hands are shaking but he can't tell if it's from the cold.

"Is that why you saved him?"

"Karen this wasn't some convoluted plan to trick you into something. Thomas was just there and so was I. It could've been anyone."

She crosses her arms close to her chest, digging her hands in the space under her armpit. Matt is left hanging onto the fabric by her elbow. Since it's all for show, he doesn't try to shift her.

They reach her place without saying any more. Matt is surprised when she doesn't go straight inside. He can't read her, and for once, he doesn't try.

“Ok, why?” she explodes, hands flying between them.

“Why what?”

“That night you said that you were jealous of Thomas and I…I want to know why.”

_Oh._

“Why do you think, Karen?”

“No. No, Matt. I’ve had enough of thinking...of…of…of trying to interpret every little thing you do and you don’t do. I need to know why.”

“Does it matter?”

“It can’t hurt.”

Matt winces just at the thought, “you sure about that?”

“I’d like to think that after everything we’ve been through…” she pauses. Her teeth bite into the flesh of her lower lip. Blood rushes to the spot, heating her skin.

“What? What are you not saying?” 

It takes all that Matt has not to move closer to her.

“Just tell me why Matt," she finally faces him, but Matt suspects her eyes are still averted, "I think…I need to hear why. I can’t…”

“Ok. Ok,” he agrees to still her, but then the enormity of her question hits him and he runs his free hand through his hair, “I…Isn’t it obvious, Karen?”

“No. Not with you, nothing is ever obvious.”

He grins, but he is not sure why. Inside nothing is smiling. Indecision pulls him apart. He could say it, out loud, finally say it. Let her know that she has more than one choice, that she always has had. He could and then...and then reality would come knocking. 

And so he does the only thing he can do. He gives her up, in that moment. Something heals but scars, uneven and forever broken. Because it's her, the one perfect thing in his life. His one perfect moment. And she'll always be that, the treasure he chose to lock away. But he doesn't have to be hers. She has a shot at it, at that fairytale happy ending, ordinary days and everyday smiles, mundane problems to add a little spice, a child or two, sleepless night, hugs that envelop from behind while she makes a batch of pancakes that remind her of home. 

Safe. Happy. Whole. Atoned.

He sees it now. It's so beautiful it almost makes him smile. It's beautiful enough that he makes it become just that: enough.

"You'd better get inside," he tells her, moving out of her way.

He knows she'll interpret his silence as one more secret and he'll let her, hoping it will keep her on the right path. He won't let the devil take her life away anymore.

She lingers, confused. Their breaths mist together. Her smell, the rain and her skin, that perfect blend, sends a pang of longing in the pit of his stomach.

“I just…I just need some time, ok?” She admits.

“Of course.”

She sets off up the steps at a run, and lets herself in.

*

“What? What happened?”

Matt’s mouth opens but nothing comes out. Words keeps getting jammed in the middle of his throat, like the flame fizzing out on the fuse before the fireworks. He’s not sure if he’d rather they poured out of him, if that would make him feel more full or more empty.

“Matt?”

He's drenched, water pouring down his shoulders and dripping insistently into the office carpet like he is still standing in the downpour. The umbrella is wrangled shut, tight between his knuckles in a way that is likely no doing the fractures any favors. He didn't use it when he parkoured his way back to the office. He's still not sure why he didn't head home instead. Or out, away, to hide in the devil.

Foggy stares and Matt says nothing, stands there, by his door, mute.

“Let’s go,” Foggy says, grabbing his coat on his way and Matt is relieved when Foggy pulls him by the arm and guides him through the streets, so that Matt doesn't need to think or sense or measure or worry. Relieved when the first shot of something that is definitely not accurately described on the bottle burns on its way down his throat. Relieved, when the second is nudging his hand on the bar and the third is waiting patiently to find a new home.

*

Matt's mind is spinning pleasantly when Foggy plucks up the courage to say the thing that has been lingering in his tentative breaths.

"Why didn't you tell me? About Karen?"

"I didn't know," he admits honestly.

Foggy scoffs, "come on!"

Josie's is heaving with the mid-week locals looking for a moment of respite from the monotony of their lives. Outside, the weather continues to bar its teeth and the bodies crammed inside are pulsing with heat, sweaty under all the extra layers. The chaos would normally send Matt's senses spiraling, but he doesn't seem to mind it so much tonight, finding that if he lets it all wash through him it has a soothing quality akin to white noise.

Matt plays with the label of his beer while he ponders his answer. Two men play pool behind him, the stick whizzing through the air, hitting the ball with the perfect muted clack and sending one straight into a hole. It reminds Matt of a different time, when things were a little easier and a lot more complicated, and he was allowed to stray on the sound of her heart, on the hesitant strokes of her fingers on the back of his hand.

"So much has happened between us, so much..." he licks his lips, "hurt and misunderstanding and...we only had one night. Not even that, one evening. It was...it was perfect. But in all the rest, that's all it ended up being. One perfect moment."

"So that's it? You are giving up?"

"I think we are way past an apology, Foggy."

"Well, for what it's worth, I think she would've been happier with you."

"You think?" Matt tries to quench the surge of desperate hope.

"I've met Thomas. You have better abs."

A laugh startles out of Matt, "I'll drink to that."

*

That night sleep is uncomfortable but medicinal almost, inescapable. His senses are swallowed into a void, trapped into the heaviness of the alcohol, and for once Matt's mind quietens, appeased.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First, thanks to forshameforshame for the song suggestion! Very happy I managed to squeeze it in :)
> 
> This week I cheated and wrote most of this Chapter during work hours, hence the more timely update. I have been just as crap in responding to comments though. I hope you'll forgive me and this is not discouraging you. I read them, I re-read them, I hug them to myself, I love you all! I'm just so...tired. I went to write a 'what happened in the chapter before' sentence and my mind just blanked. I had to read the damn thing again to remember. You guys deserve better than that!
> 
> We are almost there, though. One more Chapter to go, maybe an epilogue (you guys deserve an epilogue) - and it's all thanks to you! So be proud of yourselves.
> 
> Look after yourselves, readers. Stay safe. Stay happy. Stay healthy. ♡


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